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Symbotic announced Thursday it will acquire Walmart’s Advanced Systems and Robotics business unit. The two companies have partnered on Walmart’s automation systems since 2017.
Symbotic will pay Walmart $200 million for the transaction, along with up to $350 million in additional future payments. The company will be tasked with building and deploying an automation system for Walmart’s accelerated pickup and delivery centers (APDs), which will help the retailer speed up the systems that power its in-store pickup and same-day home delivery services. Walmart will fund a development program to help Symbotic develop that technology; the retailer will pay the technology provider a total of $520 million for the development program.
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Greg Cathey, senior vice president of transformation and innovation at Walmart, said implementing Symbotic’s automated systems will give Walmart consumers a better, faster experience.
“We’re excited about what this means for our customers. We anticipate the synergy between Symbotic’s expertise and our nearly decade-long relationship in innovating the supply chain technologies to elevate customer service and rapidly advance our in-store Accelerated Pickup and Delivery capabilities,” Cathey said in a statement.
The transaction shows that retail and e-commerce’s biggest players have a keen interest in using artificial intelligence and related technologies to streamline operations in their stores. And consumers seem to have a strong interest in in-store pickup options; according to Locally data, nearly half of e-commerce shoppers abandoned their carts if local pickup was unavailable during the 2024 holiday season.
The AI-enabled robotics company noted that, “if performance criteria are achieved,” the superstore giant has committed to purchase and deploy Symbotic systems for 400 APDs throughout the United States; Walmart could also add more APDs in the next several years if the results appear promising. Symbotic did not disclose what kind of strategic targets it needs to meet to please Walmart.
Symbotic expects the transaction with Walmart could boost its backlog by $5 billion and that the new solution could expand its total addressable market to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. That, said Rick Cohen, chairman and CEO of Symbotic, is an exciting prospect for the Wilmington, Mass.-based company.