Walmart AI Assistant Sparky Boosts Customer Spending 40% as Retail Embraces AI-Driven Sales

Walmart AI Assistant Sparky Drives 40% Higher Customer Spending - Walmart (NASDAQ:WMT)

Walmart's AI Bet Is Working: Sparky Users Spend 40% More as CEO Says AI Will Reshape 'Nearly Every Part of Our Business' Walmart Inc. (NASDAQ:WMT) said Thursday that customers using its artificial intelligence (AI) assistant Sparky spend 40% more per order than those who don't, highlighting the retailer's growing push to turn AI into a shopping and sales tool. Sparky Users Are Spending More, and Using It More CEO John Furner told analysts during the company's second-quarter earnings call that the number of customers using Sparky was up 70% from a year ago, and those who use it for shopping spend 40% more per order. In an example he mentioned, a customer asked Sparky for a weekly meal plan of healthy, high-protein foods, and within seconds, it returned recipes and meal kits the customer could add to their cart with one click. Sparky also recognized ingredients the customer had already purchased, so that they wouldn't buy duplicates. "It's building trust," Furner added. Why Ross Stores Shares Are Trading Higher By Around 9%; Here Are 20 Stocks Moving Premarket Ross Stores beats estimates with Q2 financial results, shares jump 9.1%. Other gainers include RFAI, HOWL, SUGP, SDEV, ZKH, BTAI, SXTC, TREO, and ASST. Losers are JZ, DFNS, FLUX, and MMA. 3 min read Read this article Part of a Broader AI Push Across the Business Furner framed Sparky as part of a broader strategy to use AI to make shopping easier and more personalized while also helping Walmart's own associates work more efficiently. "We believe AI will improve nearly every part of our business by making shopping better and our associates' work easier," he said. Sparky, which Walmart launched in June 2025, has also become central to the company's advertising ambitions. The retailer has since tested "Sponsored Prompt" ads inside Sparky and partnered with OpenAI to let ChatGPT users buy Walmart products directly, a strategy that mirrors rival Amazon.com Inc.'s (NASDAQ:AMZN) push into Sponsored Prompts inside its own AI assistant, Rufus. Forecast Clouds Strong Q2 Beat For the second quarter, Walmart reported adjusted earnings of 81 cents per share, beating the consensus estimate of 74 cents, according to Benzinga Pro, while sales reached $187.9 billion, topping the $186.8 billion estimate. For the third quarter, Walmart expects adjusted earnings of 62 cents to 64 cents per share, below the 68-cent analyst estimate, and forecasts sales of $183.134 billion to $184.468 billion, compared with the $188.339 billion estimate. Price Action: Shares of the company fell 9.15% on Thursday to close at $103.59 and gained 0.35% in pre-market trading on Friday. Benzinga edge rankings show Walmart's stock has a Momentum score in the 15th percentile and a Growth score in the 92nd percentile. Politics Justin Wolfers Says Consumer Pessimism Is at a Record High: 'History Suggests It Shouldn't Be' Economist Justin Wolfers said pessimism about the economy is at an all-time high, even though real wages tend to recover. 2 min read Read this article Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: Tada Images / Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Retailers Report AI-Driven Sales and Bigger Baskets in Q2 Earnings | PYMNTS.com

Walmart's global eCommerce grew 23% in the quarter, according to earnings results released Thursday (Aug. 20). Shoppers using Walmart's AI assistant, Sparky, spend 40% more per order, with total users up 70% year over year, CEO John Furner said on an earnings call. Amazon reported the same pattern after merging its AI tools into a single assistant, Alexa for Shopping, in May. More than 350 million shoppers have used it in the past year, active users nearly doubled year over year, and U.S. customers who use it spend 40% more per order than those who don't, CEO Andy Jassy said, CX Dive reported July 31. Target made the same case this week. Digital traffic from external AI platforms is growing more than three and a half times faster than the industry average, CEO Michael Fiddelke said during an earnings call, citing partnerships with companies like OpenAI. "While still small in total today, as more consumers begin to explore the benefits of agentic shopping, Target's digital traffic sourced from external AI platforms is growing," Fiddelke said. Target is also weaving AI into its own app. AI-powered teacher and college wish lists saw creation volume jump more than 50% ahead of back-to-school season. Numbers So Far Come Mostly From Grocery Nearly every hard number retailers have shared comes via repetitive, habitual shopping from groceries and household staples. Albertsons said it has seen average order value increase 10% when customers use the company's conversational search and 26% when they use its more comprehensive assistants that find recipes and ingredients that match their dietary preferences. Those categories make an AI assistant's job easy. Predicting what a customer needs again is simpler than helping them discover something new. What hasn't been proven is whether that holds outside grocery, in categories driven by browsing and discovery rather than repetition. Shopify's data hints at the harder test. AI-referred traffic and orders on Shopify each tripled year over year, and its share of sales outside major product categories has held steady since 2025, meaning AI is already reaching niche, non-repetitive purchases there. Discovery-Driven Retail Tells a Different Story TJX, the parent of TJ Maxx, Marshalls and HomeGoods, reported comparable sales growth of 4%, but the company's earnings call centered on merchandising, not AI, CNBC reported Wednesday (Aug. 19). TJX sells almost entirely through in-store, treasure-hunt browsing, the kind of unpredictable shopping an AI assistant is least equipped to replicate. Etsy showed the same limit from the other direction. Agentic traffic on the platform grew roughly 15 times year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025, and it remained less than 1% of Etsy's total traffic as of its most recent quarter. Etsy is built entirely around the kind of browsing and discovery TJX relies on in stores, one-of-a-kind items a shopper wasn't necessarily searching for by name, and even there, AI's actual share of traffic remains small despite a fast growth rate. The gap is the real test ahead. Walmart, Amazon and Target all have real numbers showing AI driving more spending per order, but those numbers sit almost entirely in categories where predicting demand is easiest. Consumers are already comfortable using AI to shortcut the research part of shopping. The PYMNTS Intelligence report "The Overlap Effect: How Amazon and Walmart Expanded the Crowd and Shrank the Basket" found in July that 38% of AI users compared prices across retailers with the technology and 36% used it to find deals. Willingness extends further than research alone. The PYMNTS Intelligence report "From Assistive to Agentic AI: Consumers Wade Into Autonomous Commerce" found in January that 49% of consumers interested in agentic AI would let an assistant complete both routine and larger, research-driven purchases on their own. However, that willingness has mostly been tested in categories consumers already buy on repeat. Whether it holds once the purchase is something a shopper wasn't already planning to make is the question this quarter's earnings haven't answered yet. For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.