Walmart is deploying millions of ambient Internet of Things battery-free sensors throughout its massive supply chain in the U.S.
The
retail giant is using technology from Wiliot in what the IoT vendor is
calling the first large-scale deployment of ambient IoT in the retail
sector and one of the largest such implementations to date.
Ambient
IoT is a class of IoT devices mainly powered by harvesting ambient
energy from radio waves, light, motion, heat, or other viable ambient
energy sources. It’s an evolution of legacy IoT and radio frequency
identification technologies that promise lower costs and high
scalability.
Walmart will be using the IoT sensors to track
pallets nationwide by the end of 2026. “Expansion to other global
markets is under consideration, but the immediate focus is the U.S.
rollout,” Cathey said.
The company will now have real-time
insights into inventory management, knowing exactly where merchandise is
located and whether it’s owned by the retailer, at any moment, and
covering an estimated 90 million pallets of inventory when at full
scale.
The ambient IoT sensors Walmart uses capture signals about
temperature, location, humidity, and dwell time. These signals are
linked with the company’s advanced artificial intelligence systems,
enabling the company to dramatically improve supply chain efficiency,
inventory accuracy, and cold chain compliance.
“We expect to be
active in 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 rollout will
cover 4,600 Walmart Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and more than 40
distribution centers, generating high-resolution supply chain data that
feeds into Walmart’s AI systems, he said.
“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.”
Greater visibility into supply chain
What
makes the addition of ambient IoT sensors significant is it provides a
new stream of data into AI systems, enabling them to be even more
effective in giving Walmart greater visibility into supply chain
operations.
The technology initiative is already making a
significant impact by eliminating some manual tasks and providing
automated alerts, Cathey said. “Associates no longer need to perform
time-consuming checks to locate items,” he said. “Automated alerts now
flag this information in real time, allowing associates to act faster
and dedicate more time to serving customers.”
The enhanced
visibility into the supply chain is also helping to resolve inventory
discrepancies, allowing improved customer experiences.
While
Cathey did not disclose specific figures such as cost savings, Walmart
is anticipating gains from higher supply chain efficiency, improved
inventory accuracy, reduced manual tasks for associates, and the ability
to get items on shelves more quickly. “Customers [will] benefit from
better product availability and consistency,” he said.
“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.”
Ambient
IoT is changing this model, Bellanger said, by fueling AI with data
that reflects what’s actually happening throughout the supply chain.
“We
have been here before; Walmart was an early adopter of RFID back in
2004 when it was supposed to provide much the same functionality,” said
Bill Ray, distinguished vice president, analyst and chief of research at
research firm Gartner. “However, this time the cost of the tags is much
lower, and that will be a tipping point.”
Ray says it’s important
to note that the value of such IoT systems is already known. “The
business models have been well studied and evaluated, when RFID was
first touted as the solution to supply chain problems,” he said. “RFID
has had an enormous impact, but the cost of the tags prevented the
transformation it had promised. The industry has been able to integrate
the new, lower-cost tags into the same value models, and come up with
positive answers.”
Gartner has been tracking Wiliot for a long
time. “The question was never if the technology could deliver on its
promise. The question was if Wiliot could reliably scale production
without compromising tag performance or price, and if it could integrate
with existing supply chain systems. This announcement tells us that
Walmart is convinced it can, now Wiliot will have to prove it,” Ray
said.
“Ambient IoT just works,” Cathey said. “It doesn’t require
wanding or scanning. It lets our associates do what they do, and they
can focus on doing their jobs safely and efficiently while providing
continuous, real-time visibility into our supply chain.”
Ambient IoT got a boost earlier this year when a new business alliance was created
to develop and promote an open, multi-standard ecosystem for ambient
IoT manufacturers, suppliers, integrators, operators, users, and
customers, based on next-generation, battery-free ambient IoT standards.
By
focusing on advanced communication technologies, the alliance is
seeking to overcome the limitations of traditional battery-powered IoT
devices, promoting more sustainable and efficient products.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/15/walmart-deploying-millions-of-internet-iot-sensors-across-us.html
