Walmart snags Google and Amazon alum as CTO
Walmart now has a chief tech officer, and he's an exec with e-commerce and machine learning expertise.
- I've been covering technology and mobile for 12 years, first as a telecommunications reporter and assistant editor at ZDNet in Australia, then as CNET's West Coast head of breaking news, and now in the Thought Leadership team.
Walmart is pushing further into tech.
Walmart has named former Google , Amazon , Microsoft and IBM exec Suresh Kumar as its chief technology officer, a newly created position.
Kumar will use his experience in e-commerce, cloud and machine learning for the role, Walmart said in a blog post Tuesday.
First spotted by CNBC, Kumar will report directly to CEO Doug McMillon, who said Kumar "has a unique understanding of the intersection of technology and retail."
"The technology of today and tomorrow enables us to serve our customers and associates in ways that weren't previously possible," McMillon added.
At Google, Kumar served as vice president and general manager of display, video, app ads and analytics. At Microsoft, he was corporate vice president of cloud infrastructure and operations. He spent 15 years at Amazon, including as vice president of technology for retail.
Walmart has been pushing more into tech, last week launching a range of Walmart tablets running Android Pie.
They come in 8-inch and 10-inch varieties costing $64 and $79. Both run on the Android 9 operating system, have a 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of ROM storage.
Walmart is also selling a 10.1-inch tablet with detachable keyboard for $99.
They all have a 2-megapixel rear camera, a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera, a 2.5D touchscreen, and a resolution of 800x1,280.
Walmart, looking to compete more with Amazon, launched one-day shipping this month.
