Walmart’s Big AI Bet is 1.6 Million Humans

How many of your employees would say AI is relevant to their job? How many have the skills that matter? How much have you invested in getting them there?

Walmart made what I believe is the boldest AI workforce move of the year.

Not a product launch, not a platform announcement, but a commitment to train all 1.6 million of its employees on AI fundamentals, for FREE. The training will be delivered through Google’s new AI Professional Certificate. This includes frontline associates stocking shelves, store managers running operations, corporate staff and more.

Yes, anyone can buy the training, and select groups (like small businesses) can get it free from Google. But what’s unique is Walmart’s choice to fund, normalize, and operationalize it for essentially their entire U.S and Canada employee base.

The eight-hour Google AI Professional Certificate covers core AI concepts, research applications, content creation, and data analysis. Verizon, Colgate-Palmolive, and Deloitte are adopting the same credential, but nobody is deploying it at Walmart’s scale.

AI Fluency = 4.5x Higher Wages

The timing matters. A new Google and Ipsos study, released the same week, found that only 5% of U.S. workers qualify as “AI fluent,” meaning they’ve actually reorganized how they work around AI. Just 40% use AI at work at all. Among those who don’t, 53% say AI isn’t relevant to their job. And only 14% have received any employer-provided AI training in the past twelve months.

The workers who are AI fluent are 4.5x more likely to report higher wages. 4x more likely to have received a promotion tied to AI skills. Fluency is already a sorting mechanism for economic mobility, and most employers are doing almost nothing to help their people get there.

Why It Matters

1\ The fluency gap is already a wage gap.

When AI-fluent workers earn more and get promoted faster, we’re watching a new form of stratification take shape in real time. I’ve seen versions of this across the enterprise leaders I work with: the teams that built AI literacy six months ago are now operating at a fundamentally different level of output and visibility than peers who didn’t. The divide isn’t access to the technology. It’s the organizational willingness to invest in helping people use it.

2\ Eight hours won’t produce AI engineers. That’s the point.

BCG’s 10-20-70 rule captures the proportions of successful AI implementation: 10% algorithms, 20% technology stack, 70% human transformation, meaning process redesign, cultural readiness, and workforce upskilling. Most organizations pour investment into the first two and treat the third as somebody else’s problem. Walmart is starting with the 70%. A shared vocabulary. A baseline of literacy across 1.6 million people.

3\ Upskilling people is a strategic wager, not a charitable one.

Walmart is betting that a trained workforce working alongside AI generates more long-term value than a smaller workforce supplemented by AI. This aligns with what I explored in The Intelligence Infrastructure: Standard Chartered’s internal talent marketplace. Using AI, the marketplace maps employee skills to short-term, internal projects ("gigs") across different departments. It has engaged more than 39,000 employees and has unlocked over US$8.5 million in cost savings while increasing the share of jobs filled internally by 10%.

4. The real crisis is institutional silence.

Only 14% of workers have received AI training from their employer in the past year. Only 37% say their organization offers any guidance on AI use at work. Google’s chief economist Fabien Curto Millet framed the risk plainly: organizations that fail to invest in training will lose ground to competitors already capturing AI-driven gains.

I wrote about this gap last October in Work Design Magazine: organizations are pouring trillions into teaching machines to think while their own people are quietly breaking down under AI anxiety and frozen career paths. Walmart's move is the first large-scale corporate answer to that problem.

A trillion-dollar company putting visible resources behind the human side of AI sends a signal. The rest of the market will either follow or pay the cost of waiting. The questions at the top of this piece aren’t rhetorical. They’re the ones your executive leaders and board should be asking this quarter. Walmart already answered them.

Until next time,

Ram

— 

Ram Srinivasan

MIT Alum | Author, The Conscious Machine | Global Future of Work and AI Adoption Leader published in Business Insider, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, MIT Executive Viewpoints and more.

—

A Message From Ram:

My mission is to illuminate the path toward humanity's exponential future. If you're a leader, innovator, or changemaker passionate about leveraging breakthrough technologies to create unprecedented positive impact, you're in the right place. If you know others who share this vision, please share these insights. Together, we can accelerate the trajectory of human progress.

Disclaimer:

Ram Srinivasan currently serves as an Innovation Strategist and Transformation Leader, authoring groundbreaking works including "The Conscious Machine" and the upcoming "The Exponential Human."

All views expressed on "Substrate" and across all digital channels and social media platforms are strictly personal opinions and do not represent the official positions of any organizations or entities I am affiliated with, past or present. The content shared is for informational and inspirational purposes only. These perspectives are my own and should not be construed as professional, legal, financial, technical, or strategic advice. Any decisions made based on this information are solely the responsibility of the reader.

While I strive to ensure accuracy and timeliness in all communications, the rapid pace of technological change means that some information may become outdated. I encourage readers to conduct their own due diligence and seek appropriate professional advice for their specific circumstances.