U.S. retail chain Walmart (WMT), known for its blue-collar heritage and value focus is set to mix it with the Californian tech stocks by edging closer to a $1 trillion valuation.
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ChatGPT Deal
Mizuho analyst David Bellinger said the main driver of the push towards the magical mark is the partnership the retailer announced with OpenAI earlier this week.
As part of that deal, customers can shop at Walmart through ChatGPT by using a new feature called Instant Checkout.
With the help of ChatGPT, Walmart’s new “agentic commerce” tool can now learn, plan, and predict what customers might want. This shift allows Walmart to help customers discover what they need more quickly and easily and buy them directly through ChatGPT by clicking a “buy” button.
Walmart shares jumped 5% on the news, their biggest one-day gain since April when tariffs were paused. Its share price fell 2% today, but it is still up 20% in the year-to-date. Its market value now sits at $852 billion- tantalizingly close to the trillion.
Step Forward
The retail giant is “clearly ahead of the curve here, while others have been slow to adapt or even made efforts to block AI web crawlers,” said Bellinger, calling the tie-up “a major step forward in the adoption and broader acceleration of agentic commerce.”
Cracking the trillion-dollar threshold would vault Walmart into a rare group of stocks, one that remains overwhelmingly dominated by technology names.
Bellinger is also impressed with how well the WMT stock has coped this year given tariff uncertainty and faltering consumer confidence.
“Shares can still work in a lukewarm economy and combined with early/developing initiatives, it represents a must-own name in the consumer space,” he said.
Walmart’s strength is not just in its tech capabilities but being able to weather economic storms with its value and low price focus.
After gaining more than 11% in 2023, the company jumped nearly 72% last year, its biggest annual gain since 1998.
“The market has recognized the advantages of Walmart’s combination of tech and old-school retail model,” said John Zolidis, president and founder of Quo Vadis Capital.
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