Walmart is the world's largest retailer with $650B+ in annual revenue, operating 10,500+ stores in 19 countries. Its US grocery business - 25% US grocery market share - is larger than Amazon, Kroger, and Costco combined. Walmart+ membership competes with Amazon Prime. Its advertising business grew 30%+ as brands pay to reach its 240M+ weekly shoppers. Its Sam's Club warehouse chain is its highest-margin business.
Key relationships in depth
Walmart has deployed NVIDIA AI technology for supply chain optimization, inventory management, and in-store automation across its 10,500+ stores and 42 distribution centers. Walmart's AI factory uses NVIDIA GPUs in its data centers to run computer vision models for shelf stocking detection, demand forecasting models for the world's largest retail supply chain, and autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) that use NVIDIA Jetson edge AI processors for warehouse navigation.
Why it matters: Walmart's supply chain processes 1 billion+ items annually, and even marginal improvements in demand forecasting accuracy driven by AI have multi-billion dollar inventory cost implications. NVIDIA's GPU infrastructure provides the compute horsepower for Walmart's AI models to process real-time point-of-sale data, weather patterns, social trends, and supplier signals into integrated demand forecasts.
Walmart and Google announced in January 2026 a partnership to embed Walmart and Sam's Club shopping directly into Google's Gemini AI assistant using a Universal Commerce Protocol. Users can discover, personalize, and purchase Walmart products through conversational Gemini interactions, with the experience personalized to linked Walmart+ and Sam's Club accounts using past purchase history. Walmart is also one of Google Cloud's largest retail customers for supply chain analytics and inventory optimization.
Why it matters: Walmart's e-commerce ambitions require distribution into the AI-powered discovery layer that Google's Gemini increasingly represents, particularly as Google Search integrates AI-generated shopping recommendations that bypass traditional product listing ads. Google gains Walmart's enormous product catalog and Walmart+ membership data as a Commerce signal that makes Gemini's shopping recommendations more relevant.
Walmart designated Microsoft Azure as its preferred strategic cloud provider in 2018 and has expanded the partnership to migrate hundreds of critical applications to Azure. Walmart uses Azure for e-commerce, supply chain optimization, store operations analytics, and Sam's Club digital experiences, while collaborating on AI-powered retail technology.
Why it matters: Walmart's $14B+ annual technology investment is central to its strategy to compete with Amazon. Azure provides the cloud backbone for Walmart's GoLocal delivery, Walmart Connect advertising platform, and real-time inventory management across 10,500+ stores. The partnership also includes upskilling 1.6M Walmart associates on Microsoft 365.
Walmart & Visa
Visa is accepted at all Walmart stores globally, processing tens of billions of dollars in transactions annually. Walmart is one of the largest single-location retail networks in the world, and Visa's presence at checkout is fundamental to its payment volume. The relationship also involves friction: Walmart has historically pushed back on Visa interchange fees and threatened to drop Visa acceptance at its stores.
Why it matters: Walmart processed $648B in US net sales in FY2025. Even conservatively assuming 30% of transactions use Visa, that implies $100B+ of annual Visa payment volume through Walmart alone. Visa earns approximately 0.1-0.2% on each transaction in network fees, making Walmart one of its largest revenue-contributing merchants.
Relationships are compiled by VexMap from company filings, announcements and reporting, and last reviewed September 2026. Spotted something wrong? Tell us. Not investment advice.