It took 64 years to build Walmart. It took 3 years to turn it into a $1 trillion tech company

Walmart’s market cap reflects its transformation over the past few years.

Customers enter a Walmart store on April 09, 2025 in San Leandro, California. Walmart is pulling its first-quarter earnings estimates as President Donald Trump’s new tariffs could impact its profits in the first quarter. [Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]

On the one hand, the fact that Walmart passed $1 trillion in market cap is notable, but not especially surprising. The company has long been the largest company in the world, measured by revenue. Almost everyone is familiar with the small five-and-dime store that started in one of the most rural towns in America and grew up to become the biggest retailer in the world.

On paper, this looks like just another milestone in a 64-year-old success story. But a closer look at how Walmart just hit a market cap reserved almost exclusively for tech giants reveals how the company has changed, even in just the past three years.

For the past six decades, Walmart was the king of bricks and mortar. No one would think of it as the underdog, but as more and more shopping moved online, the company faced intense pressure, especially from Amazon.

And so, over the past few years, Walmart rebuilt itself into something that looks a lot more like a tech company. It even moved its stock to the Nasdaq, listed next to Apple, Nvidia, Meta, and—of course—Amazon.

Here are the three most significant things that led to Walmart’s transformation into a $1 trillion giant:

The most tangible part is actually something most people won’t ever see—at least, not directly. In late 2024, Walmart used its AI to overhaul 850 million lines of product data. This is pretty boring stuff—granular details like dimensions, descriptions, and specifications, for nearly every item it sells.

In the past, that kind of cleanup would have required 100 times the head count and a decade of manual entry. By doing it with code, Walmart built a foundation in which search results actually match customer intent. It’s the difference between guessing what you’re looking for and using technology to give you exactly what you want.

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