Walmart says shoppers who use Sparky, its AI shopping assistant inside the Walmart app, rack up baskets about 35% larger than shoppers who don’t, according to newly appointed CEO John Furner on the company’s Q4 earnings call. Sparky lives behind the smiley-face “Ask Sparky” button and helps customers with product discovery (finding items, summarizing reviews) plus real-life planning assist (think: what’s on tonight’s sports slate or what weather to expect at the beach). Walmart also has a separate AI assistant for merchants, Wally, launched last March—because someone has to help the people stocking the digital shelves, too.
The adoption stat is the other headline: Walmart U.S. CEO David Guggina said roughly half of the app’s users have tried Sparky. The company’s pitch is that this isn’t just “search, but with a chatbot”—it’s a move toward intent-driven shopping, where the assistant understands what you’re trying to accomplish (party, camping trip, weekly meals) and turns that into a ready-to-buy basket. Furner framed it as tightly linked to Walmart’s omnichannel machine: when Sparky helps build the order, Walmart can fulfill via delivery, pickup, or in-store using forward-deployed inventory and its 1.5 million U.S. associates.
Strategically, Walmart is layering AI onto existing tech platforms to scale more consistently across markets while keeping capital intensity down. Sparky is U.S.-only for now, but Furner said the goal is to expand globally. One notable contrast: Walmart is pursuing AI shopping through partnerships (including OpenAI and Google) rather than going it alone; CFO John David Rainey positioned this as letting tech providers handle the core AI work while Walmart focuses on translating it into retail experiences that drive customer value—and, if the 35% basket lift holds, some very measurable commercial upside.
Read more at ModernRetail.