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Walmart Global Tech (abbreviated as WGT; formerly Walmart Labs and Kosmix)[7] is the technology arm of Walmart Inc.[8] and functions as a large-scale engineering and business services organization that powers the company’s global retail operations.[9]

Its origins trace back to 2005, when Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman founded Kosmix, a social media and search startup.[10] In April 2011, Walmart acquired Kosmix and used it as the foundation to establish @WalmartLabs, a dedicated research and innovation division focused on advancing the company’s digital capabilities.[11][12]

Over time, Walmart expanded and restructured its technology operations, and in 2016 it merged Walmart Labs with its Information Systems Division (ISD) to create a unified organization called Walmart Technology.[13] This move was aimed at better integrating digital and physical retail systems, improving coordination between online platforms and in-store operations.

In August 2020, Walmart Technology launched its new identity as Walmart Global Tech as part of a new technology and shared services organization within the world’s largest retailer.[14] The head of the Global Tech is the Global Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and Chief Development Officer of Walmart Inc..[15][16]

History

Kosmix

Harinarayan and Rajaraman were co-founders of Junglee, the first shopping search engine which was acquired by Amazon.com in 1998.[17] They later created Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk[18] and started an early-stage VC fund, Cambrian Ventures, that backed several companies later acquired by Google.[19]

Kosmix expanded its focus from vertical to a horizontal search engine in June 2008, covering all subjects.[20] For a key word or topic that a user enters, “Kosmix gathers content from across the Web to build a sort of multimedia encyclopedia entry on the fly. The company has built a taxonomy of nearly five million categories on a wide range of topics. The taxonomy includes millions of connections mapping the relationship among those categories.”[21]

Growth

In June 2007, Kosmix announced a partnership with Revolution Health, in which Revolution Health will utilize Kosmix to enhance content searches on RevolutionHealth.com.[22]

Truveo announced in September 2007 that the company’s video search engine is being used by Kosmix to present topic-relevant videos on its health site RightHealth, giving users a starting point to explore health topics.[23] As of March 2008, Kosmix’ market-share had grown 730% year-over-year.[24] RightHealth was the #2 health site on the Web, according to Hitwise. Kosmix launched a personal news site called MeeHive in March, 2008 which is similar to Google News or My Yahoo!, but allows users to customize their interests to a greater degree.[21] Meehive was shut down in October 2010.[25] Kosmix launched tweetbeat in June 2010 as it entered the social media arena.[26]

In October 2009, Kosmix acquired Cruxlux, an engine designed to take any two people, places, or things and tell the user how they are connected. Cruxlux was founded in 2007 by Guha Jayachandran and Curtis Spencer and was in private beta at the time of the acquisition.[27] The terms of the deal are mostly unknown, other than that it was made in both cash and stock.[28]

In April 2011, Kosmix announced a partnership with Ask The Doctor, in which their website AskTheDoctor.com would provide Q & A format medical content for Kosmix’s website RightHealth.[29]

Walmart

Walmart Labs

Kosmix was acquired by Walmart[30] in April 2011[31] and became @WalmartLabs for a rumored amount of $300 million.[32][33][34] In June 2012, Harinarayan and Rajaraman announced that they would be leaving the company to take some time off, with no immediate plans.[35]

In June 2013, Walmart bought predictive intelligence startup Inkiru to add analytics capabilities.[36] In June 2018, Walmart announced it would hire 2,000 additional employees into Walmart Labs to improve the company’s online grocery shopping platform.[37] In July 2019, it acquired health tech startup FloCare and B2B wholesale trading platform BigTrade to bolster its customer service.[38][39]

Some products developed at Walmart Labs are Social Genome, ShoppyCat, and Get on the Shelf.[40][41]

Walmart Global Tech

In 2020, Walmart Labs launched its new global identity as Walmart Global Tech.[42] Walmart Global Tech develops and manages the foundational technologies on which Walmart Inc.’s customer experiences are built, including cloud, data, enterprise architecture, DevOps, infrastructure and security. The tech organization powers Walmart Inc. and its business units, including Walmart U.S., Sam’s Club and Walmart International. It is also an enterprise services organization that develops solutions to help 2.3 million Walmart and Sam’s Club associates work and live better.

The Global Tech associates are based in US, India, Mexico, Costa Rica and Israel.[43][44]

Since 2021, WGT has collaborated with IBM to explore supply chain use cases and customer personalization. In August 2025, Walmart introduced an internal “super agent” for engineers called Wibey, designed to streamline and coordinate the work of over 200 separate AI agents already in use across the company.[45] The company built Wallaby, a collection of retail-focused LLMs designed to provide highly contextual responses for customer and associate experiences.[46]

Partnerships

In India, the company has partnered with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras to accelerate research in new areas of technology[47] and also with Indian Institute of Science to launch the Walmart Centre for Tech Excellence.[48]

Further reading

  • Navigating the New Retail Landscape – A Guide for Business Leaders (Publisher: Oxford University Press; ISBN 9780198868767)
  • Likeable Business: Why Today’s Consumers Demand More and How Leaders Can Deliver (Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education; ISBN 9780071800471)
  • Reengineering Retail – The Future of Selling in a Post-Digital World (Publisher: Figure 1 Publishing; ISBN 9781927958803)
  • Strategic Social Media – From Marketing to Social Change (Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated; ISBN 9781119890386)

References

  1. ^ Johnson, Lauren (November 18, 2014). “This $473 billion retailer wants to be the next ad-tech star”. Adweek. Retrieved December 6, 2016.
  2. ^ Konrad, Alex (March 7, 2016). “Walmart’s CTO says it wins hiring battles with big tech by not buying the Silicon Valley hype”. Forbes. Retrieved December 6, 2016.
  3. ^ “Acquisitions”. @WalmartLabs. Retrieved December 6, 2016.
  4. ^ Marvin, Rob (March 23, 2016). “5 ways @WalmartLabs is revolutionizing mobile retail”. PC Magazine. Retrieved December 6, 2016.
  5. ^ Lardinois, Frederic (October 3, 2016). “WalmartLabs open sources the application platform that powers Walmart.com”. TechCrunch. Retrieved December 6, 2016.
  6. ^ “Technology powered for a people-led future”. Walmart Global Tech. Retrieved 2026-04-06.
  7. ^ Strategic Social Media – From Marketing to Social Change. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. 2024. pp. 217–220. ISBN 9781119890386.
  8. ^ “Walmart ‘doubles down’ on genAI with new partnership”. retail-systems.com. Retrieved 2026-04-06.
  9. ^ LinkedIn (15 March 2022). “Walmart Global Tech LinkedIn”.
  10. ^ “Kosmix Founders Leave @WalmartLabs”. forbes.com. Retrieved 2022-03-24.
  11. ^ Goodbye, Kosmix. Hello, @WalmartLabs Archived November 6, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ Wal-Mart’s Silicon Valley unit develops new search engine to battle eBay, Amazon – San Jose Mercury News Archived November 4, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  13. ^ “Wal-Mart merges tech teams to better connect online and stores”. Reuters.
  14. ^ Abrar, Peerzada (2020-08-07). “Walmart Labs’ Indian entity to be known as Walmart Global Tech India”. Business Standard India. Retrieved 2022-01-14.
  15. ^ “Suresh Kumar to Join Walmart in New Elevated Chief Technology Officer and Chief Development Officer Role”.
  16. ^ “Walmart Hires Global Tech Chief to Compete With Amazon”. The Wall Street Journal.
  17. ^ “Amazon to buy two companies”. CNET. 1998-08-04. Retrieved 2018-03-07.
  18. ^ “Walmart Ventures Into The Social Media Space With Acquisition Of Kosmix”. techcrunch.com. 18 April 2011. Retrieved 2022-03-24.
  19. ^ Ranganathan, Chandra and NS Ramnath. “Men Who Spurn Google create Kosmix” The Economic Times. 30 October 2007. Retrieved on 17 March 2009.
  20. ^ Hendrickson, Mark. “Kosmix Goes Horizontal” TechCrunch. 25 June 2008. Retrieved 25 March 2009 Archived January 25, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  21. ^ a b Helft, Michael. “Just Don’t Compare Kosmix to Google” The New York Times. 14 March 2009. Retrieved on 18 March 2009.
  22. ^ “Kosmix Partners with Revolution Health to Bring Consumers the Most Relevant Health Content on the Web” Businessweek.com. 26 June 2007. Retrieved 25 March 2009.
  23. ^ “Truveo Partners with Kosmix to Help Consumers Easily Find Topic Specific Health Videos” Business Wire, 6 September 2007. Retrieved 25 March 2009.
  24. ^ Buley, Taylor. “Life After Google” Forbes.com. 24 March 2009. Retrieved 25 March 2009.
  25. ^ Kosmix Kills Off MeeHive’s Custom News Service As It Focuses On TweetBeat | TechCrunch Archived October 13, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  26. ^ Kosmix Unleashes Its Realtime Tweetbeat On The World Cup | TechCrunch Archived July 28, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  27. ^ Kincaid, Jason (2009-10-20). “Kosmix Acquires Cruxlux, The Online Version Of ‘Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon’“. TechCrunch. Retrieved 2022-10-16.
  28. ^ Kincaid, Jason. “Kosmix Acquires Cruxlux, The Online Version Of ‘Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon'” TechCrunch. 19 Oct 2009. Retrieved 25 March 2010 Archived August 28, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  29. ^ “Wal-Mart throws weight behind online entrepreneurs”. Reuters (in Japanese). 2011-12-21. Retrieved 2022-10-16.
  30. ^ “Wal-Mart Buys Social Media Firm Kosmix”. The New York Times. 2011-04-19. Retrieved 2026-03-30.
  31. ^ “Walmart Is Counting On These Two Guys To Take On Amazon”. Business Insider. 2011-08-02. Retrieved 2026-03-30.
  32. ^ “Can Silicon Valley Culture Survive at Wal-Mart?”. MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2026-03-30.
  33. ^ Datawocky: Goodbye, Kosmix. Hello, @WalmartLabs Archived February 9, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
  34. ^ Swisher, Kara. “Wal-Mart Stores Paid $300 Million for Social Site Kosmix”. kara.allthingsd.com. Archived from the original on May 6, 2011.
  35. ^ Geron, Tomio (2012-06-21). “Kosmix Founders Leave @WalmartLabs”. Forbes. Retrieved 24 May 2014.
  36. ^ “Walmart Labs Buys Data Analytics and Predictive Intelligence Startup Inkiru”. 10 June 2013.
  37. ^ Hensel, Anna (20 June 2018). “Walmart’s tech division to add 2,000 employees this year”. VentureBeat. Retrieved 21 June 2018.
  38. ^ “Walmart Labs acquires two startups to bolster its customer service”. 9 July 2019.
  39. ^ www.ETtech.com. “Walmart Labs acquires two Bengaluru-based startups – ETtech”. ETtech.com. Retrieved 2020-04-14.
  40. ^ Think Bigger – Developing a Successful Big Data Strategy for Your Business. AMACOM. 2014. pp. 209–211. ISBN 9780814434161.
  41. ^ Statistics for Big Data For Dummies. Wiley. 2015. p. 37. ISBN 9781118940013.
  42. ^ “Walmart Labs’ Indian entity to be known as Walmart Global Tech India”. Business Standard. Retrieved 2026-04-06.
  43. ^ “About Us – Walmart Global Tech”. Walmart Global Tech. Retrieved 2026-04-01.
  44. ^ “Walmart to hire nearly 200 in Seattle as part of expansion of its Global Tech team”. GeekWire. Retrieved 2026-04-01.
  45. ^ “Walmart Wants More Developers, and More AI Agents to Automate Their Work”. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2026-04-06.
  46. ^ “Walmart Reveals Plan for Scaling Artificial Intelligence, Generative AI, Augmented Reality and Immersive Commerce Experiences”. Walmart. Retrieved 2026-04-08.
  47. ^ “Walmart Global Tech partners with IIT Madras to accelerate research and skilling”. Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Retrieved 2026-04-06.
  48. ^ “Walmart, IISc launch Centre for Tech Excellence”. Deccan Herald. Retrieved 2026-04-06.