Walmart will deploy millions of battery-free ambient IoT sensors across its US supply chain, targeting around 4,600 locations by the end of 2026 to generate real-time, high-resolution data directly into its AI systems.
The company’s near-term milestone is “about 500 Walmart locations by the end of the year, with plans for national expansion in 2026,” said Greg Cathey, senior vice president of transformation and innovation at Walmart. The full rollout spans Walmart Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and 40+ distribution centers, with “expansion to other global markets… under consideration.”
Ambient IoT devices harvest energy from existing radio waves, light, motion, or heat. Walmart’s tags will continuously capture temperature, location, humidity, and dwell time, then stream those signals into Walmart’s AI stack to raise inventory accuracy, cold-chain compliance, and supply-chain efficiency.
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“This data provides proof of delivery, improves replenishment decisions, and lets us know where our items are in real time,” Cathey said. “By combining continuous sensing with AI, we’re moving from probabilistic predictions to precision decision-making.”
Operationally, the system is already trimming manual work and speeding exception handling. The company expects gains from faster shelf placement and fewer inventory discrepancies.
“Customers [will] benefit from better product availability and consistency,” he added.
The retailer is using technology from Wiliot in what the vendor describes as the first large-scale ambient IoT deployment in retail and among the largest to date.
“AI system performance is predicated on its training data. The better the data, the better the AI performance,” said Julien Bellanger, president of Wiliot. “Supply chain AI has long been fueled by inherently out-of-date data — or forecasted data that represents projections rather than reality.”
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