Walmart Deploys Digital Twins and AI Across 4,200 Locations to Cut Supply Chain Costs

Quick Facts

Walmart and Sam’s Club have deployed digital twin technology for maintenance operations across 4,200 locations, cutting emergency alerts by 30% and refrigeration maintenance spend by 19% last year.
The company is rolling out battery-free IoT sensors to all 4,600 stores by end of 2026 in what is billed as the largest ambient IoT deployment in retail, covering an estimated 90 million pallets.
Walmart aims to automate 65% of its stores by 2026, with over half of fulfillment center operations already automated.

Walmart is rebuilding its supply chain around artificial intelligence, digital twins, and automation. The retailer has moved beyond pilot programs, embedding these tools across thousands of locations as it targets cost reduction, faster fulfillment, and real-time problem solving at scale.

The push spans everything from warehouse robotics to predictive equipment maintenance. According to Indira Uppuluri, Walmart’s Senior Vice President of Supply Chain Technology, the approach is total. “End to end, every segment of what we do is driven by some form of intelligence,” she told Supply Chain Dive.

Digital Twins Prevent Failures Before They Happen

Walmart and Sam’s Club have deployed spatial AI-powered digital twins across 4,200 stores. The technology creates real-time virtual models of each location, monitoring equipment and flagging issues before they become emergencies.

Brandon Ballard, Group Director for Real Estate at Walmart U.S., said the models can detect and diagnose problems up to two weeks in advance. “If a refrigerator’s temperature starts trending toward a risk threshold, the digital twin flags it early, creates a work order, and alerts teams to move product or adjust settings,” Ballard said.

The financial results are concrete. Walmart cut emergency alerts by 30% and reduced refrigeration maintenance spend by 19% across U.S. stores last year. Total downtime cost savings from digital twin deployments reached an estimated $1.4 million.

IoT Sensors to Cover All 4,600 Stores

Walmart has partnered with Wiliot to deploy battery-free IoT sensors across its full store footprint. By the end of 2026, the sensors will provide real-time inventory location data across all 4,600 locations, tracking up to 90 million pallets. The deployment is described as the largest of its kind in retail.

The sensor network feeds directly into Walmart’s broader inventory management and supply chain systems, giving operators visibility into merchandise movement without manual scanning or barcode checks.

Agentic AI Moves Into Decision-Making

Walmart’s technology leadership is building what CTO Hari Vasudev calls “purpose-built agentic AI,” trained on Walmart’s own retail data rather than generic models. “Our approach to agentic AI at Walmart is surgical,” Vasudev wrote in a May 2025 blog post.

Suresh Kumar, Walmart’s Global CTO, said the company made a deliberate move to unify individual AI agents into a single company-wide framework. “Once we saw how quickly teams were adopting these agents and how helpful they were, we realized agents weren’t just useful, they were essential,” Kumar said.

Uppuluri’s team uses digital twins and modeling tools to stress-test the supply chain against disruptions, including facility closures, transportation delays, and demand shifts. Transportation teams run virtual simulations of the full logistics network to identify weak points before they appear in the real world.

Automation Push Targets 65% of Stores

Warehouse automation remains central to Walmart’s 2026 targets. The company is aiming to automate 65% of its stores this year, with more than half of fulfillment center operations already running automated systems. Robotics handle storage, retrieval, and packing, reducing manual labor requirements and compressing order fulfillment times.

Vasudev acknowledged that scaling AI across Walmart’s size presents real challenges. A tool that works in one store format may not transfer to another region or layout. His teams are building systems designed to be flexible rather than fixed, avoiding one-size-fits-all deployments across a network that spans thousands of locations and multiple international markets.