There is a moment—subtle but powerful—when a transformation takes place. A cashier scans the last item, a store associate checks inventory, or a customer walks into an aisle, looking for something that might not be there. For decades, these moments were dictated by instinct, repetition, and the limitations of human bandwidth. But today, inside Walmart’s vast network of stores, something else is happening. A quiet force is reshaping retail in ways that were once unimaginable.
That force is artificial intelligence.
The Hidden Hand of AI
Retail has always been a game of inches. The difference between a stocked shelf and an empty one, a long line and a fast checkout, a satisfied customer and a frustrated one, can determine billions in revenue. Walmart, a company built on logistics and efficiency, has always understood this. But in 2025, efficiency is no longer about warehouses and supply chains alone. It is about intelligence—machine intelligence.
Greg Cathey, Walmart’s Senior Vice President of Transformation and Innovation, describes the company’s latest AI tool as a sidekick. A name that conjures images of Robin to Batman, Chewbacca to Han Solo. But in reality, Walmart’s AI is not the assistant. It is something more profound: a second brain for retail.
The tool is called Sidekick, and its purpose is simple—to democratize experience. In a company with more than 1.6 million associates in the U.S. alone, how do you ensure that a new employee understands a store the way a veteran of 20 years does? How do you transfer knowledge—without the slow process of learning through mistakes?
The answer lies in artificial intelligence.
The Sidekick Effect
Sidekick is an AI-powered assistant designed to guide Walmart’s store associates. It analyzes vast pools of data—inventory levels, sales trends, customer behavior—to suggest the next best action. If an item is out of stock, Sidekick knows where to find it in the back room. If a product is on clearance, Sidekick ensures that associates prioritize moving it to the right location.
This is the kind of intelligence that traditionally belonged to store managers, those who had spent years navigating the ecosystem of a Walmart store. But now, a new associate—on their first day—can have access to the same level of insight, not by asking a colleague, but by consulting Sidekick.
And here’s the twist: Sidekick does not track performance. There are no operational reports, no pressure to meet quotas. This is not about micromanaging employees. It is about making them better.
The result? A workforce that is not bogged down by the friction of inefficiency but is instead empowered to focus on customers.
The 1.5 Billion-Piece Puzzle
AI at Walmart is not confined to Sidekick. In the last year alone, another AI tool, Vpic, has been used to move 1.5 billion items from stockrooms to sales floors.
Imagine this: You walk into a Walmart store in 1994, and you need to restock a shelf. You grab a clipboard, walk to the aisle, write down what’s missing, and then trek to the backroom to find it. This process takes hours. But today, an associate can simply hold up a phone, scan the shelves, and let computer vision tell them exactly what needs to be moved—and where it is.
It is a simple change with profound consequences. A process that once relied on intuition and guesswork is now powered by data. Time once lost in backrooms is now spent helping customers.
The power of AI is not in replacing humans. It is in amplifying them.
The Death of Price Tags
Then there is pricing—the most mundane yet labor-intensive task in retail. For decades, Walmart associates have been responsible for manually updating price tags, walking aisle after aisle, replacing old prices with new ones. But in 2025, Walmart is rolling out digital price tags to 2,600 stores.
With the tap of a button, every price in a store can be updated in seconds. An associate who once spent their day printing and replacing labels can now focus on more meaningful tasks—helping customers, solving problems, improving the shopping experience.
It’s a small shift, but like the introduction of Sidekick and Vpic, it represents something bigger: a world where AI removes the friction from retail.
What AI Can’t Do (Yet)
Walmart’s approach to AI is notable not just for what it includes, but for what it avoids.
Nowhere in Walmart’s AI strategy is there a desire to replace human decision-making. Sidekick offers suggestions, but associates still make the final call. Vpic identifies stock inefficiencies, but employees decide how to act. Even the digital pricing system is about enabling—not dictating—better retail practices.
Cathey puts it simply: "We start with the customer experience and the associate experience. If you get those right, the business results will follow."
It is a lesson that many industries are still learning. AI, when done right, is not about automation. It is about augmentation. It is not about removing human touch—it is about refining it.
The Walmart of the Future
Every major shift in retail history—from the first self-checkout machines to e-commerce—has been met with skepticism. AI in retail is no different.
But if history is any indication, the companies that embrace these changes early are the ones that define the future. Walmart, a company that built its empire on efficiency, now sees AI as its next great frontier.
And so, as Sidekick quietly assists an associate, as Vpic scans a stockroom, as digital price tags update without a human hand touching them, a new kind of retail is taking shape.
A retail where technology is not the hero—but the sidekick.
