Dive Brief:
- Automation technology company Symbotic recently began installation of its first SymMicro system for e-commerce fulfillment in the back of a Walmart store, advancing a pact announced last year between the two companies.
- The system is expected to "come to life" in about six months, Richard Cohen, Symbotic's president and CEO, said on an earnings call last week. He declined to provide the store's location but said "it will become obvious pretty soon."
- "We have a second site that will follow shortly after that," Cohen said. "And then that should trigger a bunch more sites once Walmart actually sees the system working."
Dive Insight:
Walmart's ongoing partnership with Symbotic is a prominent example of how the retailer is investing in technology and automation to strengthen its supply chain, grow its e-commerce business and limit costs.
In 2025, Symbotic announced it would buy Walmart's advanced systems and robotics business, while the retailer would fund the tech firm’s deployment of pickup and delivery centers in the back of Walmart’s stores for order fulfillment. Walmart made a "contingent promise to purchase 400 automated systems" as part of the arrangement, according to a Symbotic securities filing.
“We anticipate the synergy between Symbotic’s expertise and our nearly decade-long relationship in innovating the supply chain technologies to elevate customer service and rapidly advance our in-store Accelerated Pickup and Delivery capabilities,” Greg Cathey, SVP of transformation and innovation at Walmart, said in a news release last year.
The SymMicro system Walmart will use focuses on fast order fulfillment. Totes holding goods are retrieved from storage by autonomous mobile robots called SymBots and brought to a pick station where an operator can fulfill multiple orders simultaneously, per Symbotic's website. Each SymMicro station can support 550 picks per hour and helps limit in-store traffic generated by e-commerce pickup operations, its website says.
"For customers generally, we see Back-of-Store Automation as key to turning ecommerce into a scalable growth engine – one that can protect and strengthen customer loyalty, and enable profitable digital growth," Matt Buckley, VP of communications at Symbotic, said in an emailed response to Supply Chain Dive.
At first, Symbotic will "overbuild" the SymMicro to make sure it works, and then the company will redesign it to be smaller and more efficient to minimize costs, Cohen said.
"So we're going to overbuild this, but we probably won't build 400 of the version we're building now," Cohen said, referring to the deal for Walmart to purchase 400 systems. "But I think the one after this, we will."
