![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/RTP_David_Guggina_named_President_and_CEO_of_Walmart_US_16x9_HighRes.jpg?w=2048\")
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Good morning.<\/strong> This week will bring big changes to the largest company in the world, Walmart Inc. Feb. 1 will mark the retirement of Doug McMillon after a remarkable tenure and Day 1 for his replacement, John Furner. But the company is also enacting other changes to its C-suite that make one thing quite clear: Walmart, a 64-year-old retailer, now sees itself as a tech company.\u00a0<\/p>\n Incoming Walmart U.S. CEO David Guggina, who is succeeding Furner atop the $500 billion domestic business, has no experience running stores and has never held a merchandising role, at Walmart or elsewhere. Such an appointment would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, before Walmart, under McMillon, decided to be a tech-forward company and not let Amazon run away with the prize.<\/p>\n But Guggina brings to his new role at Walmart another kind of experience that Walmart has been prioritizing for years: e-commerce, automation, and supply chain expertise gained at Walmart, and before that at Amazon. In announcing his promotion, Walmart touted Guggina\u2019s work, among other things, in building delivery capabilities to serve 95% of U.S. households in under three hours.<\/p>\n Another area where Guggina has appealed to the Walmart brass: adoption of AI. \u201cAI is changing how people shop, and customer expectations are higher than ever. But no one is more prepared to usher in the next era of retail,\u201d Guggina wrote in a recent LinkedIn post.<\/p>\n Analysts consider Walmart to be well ahead of other retailers when it comes to AI-assisted shopping. In October, it announced a partnership with OpenAI to allow shoppers to browse and buy Walmart products directly inside ChatGPT. Last week, Walmart and Google announced their own shopping tool. Also last week, Walmart\u2019s executive vice president for AI acceleration, product, and design, Daniel Danker, suggested at an investor conference that the company was developing auto-ordering for the replenishment of household staples.<\/p>\n Guggina isn\u2019t the only tech executive whose star is rising at Walmart. The company also appointed Seth Dallaire chief growth officer for Walmart U.S., charging him with continuing to push Walmart beyond traditional retail into tech-heavy lines of business\u2014including its booming advertising, media, and online marketplace ventures.<\/p>\n The timing of Guggina\u2019s promotion was fitting: It came soon after Walmart moved its shares from the New York Stock Exchange to the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange. In December, Walmart said the move underscores its \u201ctechnology-forward approach.\u201d<\/p>\n Bolstering Walmart\u2019s tech and AI aura has had the additional benefit of lifting the company\u2019s stock: In the last year, Walmart shares have risen 27%, double the S&P 500\u2019s growth and trouncing Amazon.\u2014Phil Wahba<\/em><\/p>\n Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com<\/em><\/p>\n Microsoft and Meta beat revenue expectations<\/b><\/p>\n Microsoft <\/span>reported<\/span> $81.3 billion in second quarter revenue and a $625 billion demand backlog, but its stock fell 5% after-hours over concerns about meeting demand and slowing Azure growth. <\/span>Meta, meanwhile, <\/span>brought in<\/span> $59.9 billion for the quarter, topping expectations. CEO Mark Zuckerberg forecast a \u201cmajor AI acceleration\u201d this year and doubled capex to $135 billion to support it.<\/span><\/p>\n Tesla announces discontinuations, xAI investment<\/b><\/p>\n Tesla <\/span>beat<\/span> Wall Street estimates with $24.9 billion in fourth quarter revenue, down 3% year-over-year. During the company\u2019s earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said the company will discontinue its Model S and X lines while investing $2 billion in his AI venture, xAI.<\/span><\/p>\n ServiceNow offers vision for company<\/b><\/p>\n ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott <\/span>told <\/span>Fortune<\/span><\/i> before its earnings call on Wednesday that the company doesn\u2019t \u201clive in the SaaS neighborhood\u201d but is moving toward becoming a marketplace for AI-ready data and tools. The company beat estimates with $3.47 billion in revenue, up 21% from a year earlier.<\/span><\/p>\n S&P 500 futures<\/b> are up 0.19% this morning. The last session closed flat. <\/span>STOXX Europe 600<\/b> was up 0.32% in early trading. The U.K.\u2019s <\/span>FTSE 100<\/b> was up 0.45% in early trading. Japan\u2019s <\/span>Nikkei 225<\/b> was up 0.03%. China\u2019s <\/span>CSI 300<\/b> was up 0.76%. The South Korea<\/span> KOSPI<\/b> was up 0.98%. India\u2019s <\/span>NIFTY 50<\/b> was up 0.30%. <\/span>Bitcoin<\/b> was at $88K.<\/span><\/p>\n How Samsung\u2019s first-ever chief design officer is reinventing the electronics giant for the AI age<\/span> by Nicholas Gordon<\/span><\/p>\n Jerome Powell says Fed independence isn\u2019t lost \u2026 yet. \u2018I certainly hope we won\u2019t\u2019 lose it<\/span> by Jake Angelo<\/span><\/p>\n JPMorgan, BofA will match the $1,000 \u2018Trump Accounts\u2019 for employees\u2019 children. Here\u2019s how to open an account<\/span> by Sydney Lake<\/span><\/p>\n Scott Bessent on the 39% of young Americans thinking favorably of socialism: They\u2019re just not invested in the stock market<\/span> by Nick Lichtenberg<\/span><\/p>\n CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams, Claire Zillman and Lee Clifford.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #onceunthinkable #Csuite #appointment #solidifies #Walmarts #identity #tech #company<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Good morning. This week will b… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14496,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[10958,451,596,10957,10960,10956,10959,953,4627],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16859"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\nTop leadership news<\/h3>\n
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