Store No. 8

This year’s CES is in the books, and as usual, Store No. 8 was there exploring what’s next for technology – in areas like the metaverse, AR/VR, sustainability and much more. But this year was extra special – we are so proud that several of our portfolio projects were featured in Walmart’s booth showcasing technology that will usher in the next generation of retail. Our efforts to bring immersive commerce to games and social apps where customers are spending increasing amounts of time were showcased, including our breakthrough capabilities to sell physical items in virtual worlds like House Flip and ZEPETO. Store No.8’s augmented reality solutions for our customers also shared the spotlight, showing how the team has been testing and learning in this evolving space to create ways for customers to navigate our stores and discover the right products more easily. We were also so proud that our alumni, including concepts that were seeded in Store No.8 like Conversational Commerce and InHome Delivery, received extensive coverage in the Walmart booth and even on the big stage. The future of retail couldn’t get more exciting! Join us at https://lnkd.in/eJ_kf9k6 #ces2024 #innovation #incubation #retail #startups

ICYMI: In the lead-up to CES last week, we announced a partnership with Unity, the world’s leading platform for creating and growing real-time 3D (RT3D) content, to give Unity developers the ability to integrate Walmart’s commerce APIs directly into their games and apps. "By opening up Walmart’s commerce APIs to the Unity development community, we’re empowering developers to offer a new mechanism to further drive user engagement while making it easy and convenient for players to complete a transaction for physical products without leaving the game, virtual world or app," said Store No. 8's Tom Kang. Read more about it here:

Walmart and Unity are bringing #immersivecommerce to more virtual worlds. Unity developers can soon natively integrate Walmart’s commerce APIs into their games and apps, allowing players to buy physical goods from Walmart without ever leaving the game. Store No. 8's Thomas Kang spoke with VentureBeat about our team-up:

We’re #hiring a new Marketing Associate, Planning And Strategy | Store Nº8 in Hoboken, New Jersey. Apply today or share this post with your network.

As a member of our core team, Jeremy Velten serves as a liaison between Store No. 8 and our stores as one of his responsibilities, helping our portfolio companies find new ways to test, learn and innovate within the real-world retail environment. Jeremy is uniquely qualified for this, not only because of his years at Walmart, but also because he’s an inventor himself – and his 7th patent was just published this week. Like with many of his previous patents, this latest one is for an invention that helps automate product sorting and delivery in our facilities. The FAST unloading machine is located in more than 2,000 Supercenter stores, helping to scan and sort new product arrivals by department or aisle. Congratulations to Jeremy for this and all the other innovations he’s developed at Walmart over the years!

Huge congratulations to our phenomenal alumni on the Walmart Conversational Commerce team for being recognized by Fast Company as one of the “Next Big Things in Tech.” It’s amazing to see the progress they’ve made over the past year since graduating from Store No. 8, as they continue to make it convenient for customers to shop via text messages. We can’t wait to see what they do next!

We’re #hiring a new Sr Software Engineer AR/Applied ML in Redmond, Washington. Apply today or share this post with your network.

We’re pleased to welcome Z. John Manolopoulos to the Store No. 8 team! As our new Tech Engagement Director, Zorba will support our portfolio companies’ technology teams and look at our Incubation and Venture Design processes with a technical lens.   Which is the perfect fit for Zorba, whose experience includes not only technical leadership roles at many companies across Silicon Valley, but also as a sports photographer for high school, college and NFL games. After three years on the Walmart Global Tech team, we couldn’t picture a better place for him than Store No. 8! Welcome, Zorba!

We thrilled to announce the first cohort for the Store No. 8 dCommerce Base Camp Accelerator Program with Outlier Ventures, Synergis Capital and KPMG US! Meet the teams: HypeLab, Reveel (r3vl.xyz), Five Elements Labs, Tokenguard.io and Unblock, and read more about them here:

We’re #hiring a new Principal Data Scientist | Store No. 8 (Health & Wellness) in Sunnyvale, California. Apply today or share this post with your network.