Walmart plans to shut Innovation Unit

The Store No. 8 Innovation Unit can easily be referred to as Walmart’s war room. Opened in 2016, the location, named after the original Walmart in Bentonville, Ark., was a technology hub for the retailer created to battle Amazon’s ecommerce dominance at the time. Store No. 8 tested out successes like online delivery into shopper’s homes and shopping over text message. However, the tech center will soon be closing, reports the Wall Street Journal . Walmart wants to curb some costs and use new ways to test technology. Ideas that were not yet profitable were tried, and some perfected, at Store No. 8. Additionally, about 300 workers moved on to other internal jobs within the company. At the National Retail Federation’s Big Show convention in New York City last week, Anshu Bhardwaj, senior vice president and chief operating officer, Walmart Global Technology and Walmart Commerce Technologies, talked about technology and said artificial intelligence is “converging in the hands of customers and companies” and will expand marketing and sales beyond traditional channels as the tech becomes more common. “I think what AI is now allowing us to do is go from an omnichannel retailer to becoming an adaptive retailer, and adaptive retailer basically means I can intersect you at the point of your convenience to get you what you want, how you want,” said Bhardwaj. Walmart is using AI language models to power its new search engine that enables shoppers to make general inquiries such as “football watch party.”