Walmart is deploying millions of IoT sensors across U.S.

Walmart Deploys millions of environmental IoT battery-free sensors across massive US supply chain

The retail giant is using Wiliot’s technology in what the IoT vendor is calling the first large-scale deployment of ambient IoT in retail and one of the largest applications to date.

Ambient IoT is a class of IoT devices powered primarily by harvesting ambient energy from radio waves, light, motion, heat, or other applicable ambient energy sources. It is an evolution of legacy IoT and radio frequency identification technologies that promise lower costs and higher scalability.

Walmart will use IoT sensors to track pallets nationwide by the end of 2026. “Expansion into other global markets is being considered, but the immediate focus is on the US launch,” Cathey said.

The company will now have real-time insights into inventory management, knowing at all times exactly where goods are located and whether they belong to the retailer, covering an estimated 90 million pallets of inventory at full scale.

Ambient IoT sensors Walmart use capture signals related to temperature, location, humidity, and dwell time. These signals are linked to the company’s advanced artificial intelligence systems, allowing the company to significantly improve supply chain efficiency, inventory accuracy and cold chain compliance.

“We expect to be active in approximately 500 Walmart locations by the end of the year, with plans for national expansion in 2026,” said Greg Cathey, Walmart’s senior vice president of transformation and innovation. The rollout will cover 4,600 Walmart Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets and more than 40 distribution centers, he said, and will produce high-resolution supply chain data that feeds Walmart’s artificial intelligence systems.

“This data provides proof of delivery, improves replenishment decisions and lets us know where our products are in real time,” Cathey said. “By combining continuous sensing with artificial intelligence, we are moving from probabilistic predictions to precise decision-making.”

Greater visibility in the supply chain

What makes the addition of ambient IoT sensors important is that it provides a new data stream to AI systems, making them more effective at providing Walmart with greater visibility into its supply chain operations.

Cathey said the technology startup has already made a significant impact by eliminating some manual tasks and providing automated alerts. “Employees no longer need to do time-consuming checks to find items,” he said. “Automated alerts now flag this information in real time, allowing employees to act faster and spend more time serving customers.”

Increased visibility of the supply chain also helps resolve inventory inconsistencies, allowing customer experiences to be improved.

Although Cathey did not disclose specific figures such as cost savings, Walmart expects gains from higher supply chain efficiency, improved inventory accuracy, reduced manual tasks for employees and the ability to get products on shelves faster. “Customers [will] “Benefit from better product availability and consistency,” he said.

“AI system performance relies on 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 outdated data or extrapolated data that represents predictions rather than reality.”

Ambient IoT changes that model by feeding AI with data that reflects what’s actually happening throughout the supply chain, Bellanger said.

“We’ve been here before; Walmart was an early adopter of RFID in 2004 when it was expected to provide nearly the same functionality,” said Bill Ray, distinguished vice president, analyst and chief research officer at research firm Gartner. “But this time the cost of the labels is much lower and this will be a turning point.”

Ray says it’s important to note that the value of such IoT systems is already known. “When RFID was first introduced as a solution to supply chain problems, business models were well studied and evaluated,” he said. “RFID made a huge impact, but the cost of the tags hindered the transformation it promised. The industry was able to integrate new, lower-cost tags into the same value models and achieve positive responses.”

Gartner has been following Wiliot for a long time. “The question wasn’t whether the technology could deliver on its promise. The question was whether Wiliot could reliably scale production and integrate with existing supply chain systems without compromising on-label performance or price. This announcement tells us that Walmart was convinced it could do it, now Wiliot had to prove it,” Ray said.

“Ambient IoT works,” Cathey said. “It doesn’t require navigation or scanning. It allows our employees to do what they do and they can focus on doing their jobs safely and efficiently while providing constant, real-time visibility into our supply chain.”

Ambient IoT gained momentum earlier this year with the formation of a new business alliance to develop and promote an open, multi-standard ecosystem based on next-generation, battery-free ambient IoT standards for ambient IoT manufacturers, suppliers, integrators, operators, users and customers.

By focusing on advanced communications technologies, the alliance aims to overcome the limitations of traditional battery-powered IoT devices and promote more sustainable and efficient products.