Walmart shifts to Nasdaq after 53 years, highlighting its tech-driven transformation

Reevaluation of traditional retail
Rising investment in AI, automation, and IoT
Omnichannel capabilities become core to retail survival

Walmart, the largest retail chain in the United States, has announced plans to move its stock listing to Nasdaq for the first time in 53 years, drawing intense attention. The decision, revealed alongside stronger-than-expected third-quarter earnings, has sparked rapid debate over shifting investment dynamics, as well as growing interest in how Walmart’s entrance into a tech-focused market will reshape the competitive landscape. In this environment, Walmart’s move is increasingly viewed as a key variable influencing not only the U.S. market but the global retail industry as a whole.

From retail giant to technology company

According to Reuters and other outlets on the 20th (local time), Walmart said during its earnings call that “trading will begin on Nasdaq on December 9.” This marks its first exchange migration since listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 1972, and given its market capitalization of $852 billion, the shift is one of the largest in history. Market data firm LSEG noted that Walmart is the fourth-largest NYSE-listed company and said, “This move goes beyond an exchange change. Nasdaq—symbolic of tech-centric markets—will now include Walmart, one of the world’s largest retail companies, marking a significant inflection point.”

Walmart reported third-quarter net income of $6.1 billion, up 34 percent from a year earlier. The company also raised its annual revenue growth outlook from the previous 3.75–4.75 percent to 4.8–5.1 percent. Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey told CNBC that “market share expanded across all income groups, with growth especially strong among higher-income consumers,” explaining that consumers with more spending power increasingly turned to Walmart for lower-priced goods. The shift in price sensitivity driven by tariff pressures and labor-market concerns has directly shaped its performance.

With these results coinciding with the Nasdaq shift, the move is widely interpreted as an effort to reposition Walmart’s investor base. Nasdaq has long been seen as a hub for companies like Nvidia and other tech leaders, and Walmart said the decision reflects its intention to “align long-term strategy with an omnichannel retail model integrated with automation and artificial intelligence.” This has fueled speculation about future index inclusion. Brian Jacobsen, chief economist at Annex Wealth Management, said, “Walmart’s potential addition to the Nasdaq-100 would be remarkable,” adding that tech-focused investors could end up holding a major consumer-staples company within the same portfolio.

Innovation in inventory, logistics, and customer experience

Walmart’s transformation into a tech-driven company is not new. It has expanded AI, automation, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) deployment across supply chains, store operations, and customer service, building the foundation for today’s Nasdaq shift. A notable example is its 2017 adoption of warehouse automation via partnership with Symbotic, which doubled logistics-center throughput and reduced product damage through robot-driven sorting, picking, and packing. Tasks that previously took months were compressed significantly, marking the beginning of a structural shift in operations.

AI has also been applied across store functions. Walmart’s in-house AI “digital twin” helps facility teams predict issues in advance, reducing emergency refrigeration alerts by 30 percent and cutting maintenance costs by 19 percent. Walmart’s conversational AI, introduced in 2020, began by answering simple queries—such as item locations or work-schedule questions—but has expanded to handling receipt-free returns. In the past, millions of daily customer inquiries were handled by roughly 900,000 employees worldwide. Recently, Walmart added a translation tool supporting 44 languages, improving communication with its customers.

The combination of AI and IoT is accelerating Walmart’s transition. Partnering with tech firm Wiliot, Walmart is deploying battery-free IoT sensors across its U.S. supply chain. Powered by ambient energy—such as radio waves, light, motion, and heat—the sensors track temperature, location, humidity, and dwell time, feeding that data into Walmart’s AI systems to improve inventory accuracy, cold-chain compliance, and overall supply-chain efficiency. Walton plans to deploy the sensors at 500 stores by the end of this year and expand to 4,600 supercenters, neighborhood markets, and over 40 distribution centers by 2026.

This technological shift has evolved further this year into an AI-driven “Super Agent” strategy. Walmart’s Super Agent system includes four agent types that support employees, developers, customers, and suppliers. Their capabilities range from HR inquiries and app-development automation to product-review summarization, recommendations, advertising-campaign setup, and order management. Hari Vasudev, Walmart U.S. vice president and CTO, said, “The Super Agent system reflects years of foundational investment,” adding that it will help Walmart act “faster and more accurately while delivering personalized customer experiences.”

Rising importance of online-offline integration

Walmart’s transformation offers important lessons for the Korean retail sector, which has struggled after falling behind on digital transformation. According to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, domestic online-retail sales in the first half of 2025 grew 15.8 percent from a year earlier, while offline sales fell 0.1 percent. As mobile shopping, instant delivery, and subscription services reshape consumer behavior, online purchasing is rising across all age groups. Although the pandemic accelerated this shift, many retailers still hesitated to redefine the role of physical stores—leading directly to losses in market share.

Korea’s major retailers, Shinsegae’s E-Mart and Lotte Shopping, have belatedly strengthened their omnichannel strategies. E-Mart has linked its operations with SSG.com, secured over 120 in-store picking-and-packing (PP) centers, and plans to expand large PP centers—capable of fulfilling more than 3,000 orders per day—to over 70 by 2025. Lotte Shopping is renovating 11 stores and expanding its two-hour “quick delivery” service across the company, turning offline stores into logistics hubs. These moves show Korea’s retail market shifting toward an omnichannel model in which offline stores focus on fulfillment and in-person experiences, while online platforms handle browsing, ordering, and payment.

AI and digital logistics are the foundation of this strategy. E-Mart is partnering with KT to advance automation, AI-driven logistics optimization, and smart-warehouse development, while GS Retail plans to deploy automated routing and scheduling systems. The industry expects AI-driven personalization to boost conversion rates by an average of 26 percent and integrated customer-experience strategies to increase lifetime customer value by more than 30 percent. However, the aggressive expansion of low-price global platforms such as Temu, Shein, and Alibaba raises uncertainty over whether these optimistic projections can be realized.

The situation at Homeplus—a retailer that once ranked second among Korea’s big-box chains—illustrates the consequences of missing the digital-transformation window. Despite entering court receivership in March and nearing sale completion, skepticism surrounding the deal remains pervasive. A private-equity official noted, “The decline of offline retail combined with the failure to execute digital transformation has sharply reduced Homeplus’s appeal,” adding that without cost restructuring, business redesign, or strong partnerships, its turnaround prospects remain limited.