Walmart will lay off or relocate up to 1,000 corporate workers, following a reorganization earlier this year of its Global Tech and Product and Design divisions.
In a May 12 memo to Walmart associates, two top executives noted that the structural change implemented earlier this year has revealed duplications, including different teams working on the same or similar problems. As a result, the divisions will now work at an enterprise level rather than be siloed.
“We’ve gone from organizing separately for Walmart U.S., Sam’s Club and our international markets to building in a unified way on a single, shared platform,” wrote Suresh Kumar, Global CTO and Chief Development Officer, and Daniel Danker, EVP, AI Acceleration, Product and Design at Walmart. “We’ve made changes to simplify how the work is organized, make ownership clearer, and better align roles to the work and skills we need going forward. That includes updating some roles to better match the work being done, bringing teams together where it makes sense, and aligning some roles to key locations where related work is already happening.”
A spokesperson familiar with the situation noted that the relocations would likely consolidate tech workers at either Walmart’s Bentonville, Ark. tech hub or the hub in Sunnyvale, Calif. The spokesperson stressed that the layoffs and relocations were not caused by AI taking jobs but by the impact of the corporate restructuring.
The retailer is coming off a strong year:
- For its FY 2026, which ended Jan. 31, 2026, Walmart generated revenue of $713.2 billion, a 4.7% increase over the previous year;
- Last month, Walmart announced plans to remodel 650 Supercenters and add 20 new stores by early 2027;
- In March 2026 Walmart announced plans to expand digital shelf labels chainwide this year, doubling the approximately 2,300 U.S. locations using the technology; and
- Walmart has earned consumers’ trust, one factor that contributed to its $1 trillion valuation achieved earlier this year, but it faces fierce competition from both big box and value retailers.
