How Walmart uses AI to serve 140 million customers a week

Old dogs can always learn new tricks, provided they are smart enough and have the right tools. Founded in 1962 -- a generation or so before ecommerce giants like Amazon -- Walmart has 11,700 stores and 140 million weekly shoppers in 28 countries around the world. Here in the 21st century, Walmart has also become the second largest online retailer. As such, Walmart is in a unique position to build a bridge between its ecommerce operations and its global network of stores. That means deploying the kind of machine learning that can leverage a strength Walmart has been building for some time: the digital relationship between its customers' online experience with the experience of shopping in malls.