How Walmart built an AI platform that makes it beholden to no one (and that 1.5M associates actually want to use)

Walmart isn’t buying enterprise AI solutions, they’re creating them in their AI foundry. The retailer’s Element platform has evolved into an internal foundry, capable of creating AI applications at a pace that renders traditional software development obsolete. With 1.5 million associates now using AI tools built on Element, Walmart has solved the build-versus-buy dilemma by creating something entirely different.

Walmart designed Element with scale in mind first, and it shows. The platform powers applications handling 3 million daily queries from 900,000 weekly users. The platform already supports real-time translation across 44 languages, reducing shift planning time from 90 minutes to 30 minutes. But these applications are leading indicators of a larger, more fundamentally powerful transformation. Walmart has industrialized AI development.

“We have built Element in a way where it makes it agnostic to different LLMs,” Parvez Musani, SVP of stores and online pickup and delivery ...