US retail colossus Walmart supersized its AI ambitions as it disclosed its crucial fourth quarter results this week.

C Douglas McMillon, president and CEO, said it had “finished the year with another quarter of strong results”.

The big box giant’s revenues for the three months to January 31 came in at $180.6bn, up 4.1% on the year.  Net income before taxes was $7bn, down 7.4% on the year. Full year revenues were $680bn, up 17.5%, with pretax net income of $26.3bn, up 20.4% year on year.

McMillon paid tribute to “our associates…doing a great job.” But he also disclosed that the company was stepping up its use of AI. Last November, it disclosed it was putting its “valuable” datasets “to work” to improve customer experience and help its staff perform their daily work.

This week he shared more examples, disclosing a new AI agent for it merchants dubbed Wally. [For the benefit of British readers, the retailer is sometimes dubbed Wally World]

“Wally is learning to help us ge