A look at the annual letters to shareholders from the chief executive officers of Walmart and Amazon reflect the reality that the rapid rate of innovation at the nation’s two largest retailers — along with the resources to sustain it — will make the task of keeping pace increasingly difficult for rival merchants. The retail titans are moving with alacrity to reinvent their core business, even as they invest billions of dollars in other relevant fields — most notably artificial intelligence.
For his part, Andy Jassy called on Amazon to extend its track record of crafting new ways to improve the lives of customers and “inventing the next inflections.” Among the ongoing initiatives at the company, he signaled out several, including the expansion of same-day and drone delivery, enhanced service in rural areas, the growth of the Leo network of satellites in low earth orbit, increased use of robotics, and, of course, AI. The last will command the lion’s share of Amazon’s $200 billion in capital expenditures in 2026.
“We believe that customers will always care deeply about massive selection, low prices, very fast delivery, ease of use and how they’re treated,” Jassy wrote. “Amazon has built a lot of capabilities that position us well to meet these customer needs for years to come. However, it’s not hard to imagine with the emergence of AI, that the interface with which customers want to interact with a retailer could be substantially different over time.”
He noted that the company’s unwillingness to settle for the status quo continues to yield tangible results. The addition of perishable food to Amazon’s same-day-delivery network in early 2025, for example, led sales of such products to increase 40-fold, helping push the company’s grocery business in the U.S. past the $150 billion mark, second only to Walmart.
John Furner, who succeeded Doug McMillon as Walmart CEO at the start of 2026, has charted a similarly ambitious course, one that aims to replicate the company’s preeminence in brick-and-mortar retailing in the digital sphere. The company has already made tremendous progress on that front; last fiscal year its global e-commerce sales advanced 24% to $150 billion. With the intention to build on that momentum, Furner expressed enthusiasm about what he characterized as the new era of retail.
Driven in large part by implementation of AI across the company, Walmart promises to provide an enhanced omnichannel experience for shoppers and associates. As in past years, much of its multibillion-dollar budget for capital expenditures will be devoted to technology. But that doesn’t mean Walmart is neglecting the stores, a resource that Furner sees as a competitive advantage.
“Walmart has a strong asset base,” he wrote. “It wasn’t too long ago that there were questions about whether stores would even be needed in the future. We are proving those critics wrong. Not only do our stores and clubs serve millions of customers daily, they also serve as critical distribution hubs for quick and accurate deliveries of both groceries and general merchandise from our first-party inventory and marketplace. We have re-imagined the role of stores as part of an end-to-end commerce solution that creates flexibility for customers, and our U.S. e-commerce business is now profitable.”
Furner and Jassy have directed the focus of the organizations they lead squarely on the future. By not taking anything for granted, embracing the need for continual change, and backing that conviction up with substantial investments, they’ve gone a long way toward ensuring that the contest for retail supremacy will remain a two-horse race well into the future.
