What's new in the aisles
Finding the exact item on a long aisle just got simpler. With Shop to Light, you search in the Walmart app, walk to the right aisle, and the product's digital shelf label flashes to help you spot it. Two sister features use the same lighting cue for workers: Pick to Light steers associates as they gather online orders, and Stock to Light helps them refill shelves.
Discussing the effort, Greg Cathey, who oversees digital transformation at Walmart as a senior vice president, said, "We are people-led, tech-powered." He described AI "as a way to help associates do their job and free up time to allow them to invest in what they love to do most, which is spend more time with customers and their fellow associates."
Timing, scale and early usage
Walmart is moving from pilot to wide deployment. Cathey said Shop to Light, Pick to Light, and Stock to Light will be in stores across the company by the holiday season. Since the limited rollout began this summer, customers have triggered 5 million flashes to locate items. With roughly 120,000 products per store, Cathey said making that selection easier to navigate is a priority.
The retailer shifted from paper to digital shelf labels so prices can be updated across the system at once. More than 4,300 stores already have the labels, and Walmart expects installation across the chain by year end. Cathey said prices on the labels are changed overnight, when shoppers are not in the store, and the system includes human oversight to ensure it has "robust governance" and avoids mistakes.
He said roughly 90% of a store's sections currently use digital labels. Walmart is not publicly sharing financial details of the program, but Cathey said pilot locations showed customers and associates got more time back while shopping and stocking. Heading into peak season, he called the features "a big win" for time savings.
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"This is a use case that customers have asked us for, associates have asked us for," Cathey said. "It gives them time back, and I think if you look at a lot of what we're trying to do, it's all around convenience and being able to help associates and customers free up that time to invest it where they want."
Tech push and guardrails
Walmart is in the middle of a broader technology upgrade across its stores and operations. As part of that push, the company introduced an AI shopping assistant, has automated portions of its supply chain, adopted radio frequency identification tags, begun preparing for agentic commerce while it adopts AI, and invested billions to upgrade store locations. On the latest earnings call, CEO John Furner said, "We believe AI will improve nearly every part of our business by making shopping better, and our associates' work easier."
Digital shelf labels and AI have also drawn criticism, including concerns about dynamic pricing and privacy tied to collecting customer shopping data. Furner, in an open letter last week, said Walmart will continue to "price the product, not the person," and emphasized that the company has no plans to base prices on customers' personal data. "Your income, shopping history, urgency or what we think you could pay won't change the price," he wrote.
Driven by pricing concerns, multiple state legislatures - with New Jersey among them - have enacted limits on digital shelf labels. Walmart said the feature is in all of its New Jersey stores and called the policy an "overreaction, as digital shelf labels are not a tool for surveillance pricing and are simply a modern way to display prices." The company has also invested in drone delivery that can get items to customers in as little as 30 minutes, and it's currently offered in select states such as Texas and Florida. A photograph taken on September 8, 2026, in Saratoga Springs, Utah, United States, shows the corporate exterior logo on a Walmart retail storefront.
Why this matters now
Convenience and speed - especially for delivery and pickup - are central to Walmart's growth plan. While the company's business has been rising and e-commerce is strong, investor worries about comparable sales and the revenue outlook weighed on the stock after its August report. It's both. They're actually one and the same."
For your day to day, the pitch is straightforward: quicker item finding in stores and more associate time for real help, not scavenger hunts. If you watch Walmart, the company is leaning into AI and in-store tech and spelling out limits on pricing and data use.
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