Walmart's New CTO Hire Suggests It May Not Be Just Eyeing Amazon’s Share - Forbes

Walmart has hired a former Google, Amazon and Microsoft executive to be its CTO and chief development officer reporting directly to company president and CEO Doug McMillon. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Getty Images

In another sign that Walmart is eager to live up to its new moniker as a “technology company,” the world’s largest retailer just named a 25-year tech industry executive whose career history spans that at major giants Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Walmart’s top nemesis, Amazon.

Suresh Kumar was named to a “new elevated role” as “chief technology officer and chief development officer” and will report directly to Walmart’s President and CEO Doug McMillon, Walmart said Tuesday. Walmart’s former executive vice president and CTO Jeremy King left to join Pinterest earlier this year.

Kumar was most recently at Google as vice president and general manager of display, video, app ads and analytics. While at Google, he was responsible for its advertising revenue on areas including GooglePlay Store, Gmail and parts of YouTube, according to his LinkedIn profile, adding he helped drive growth while “significantly” lowering Google’s costs to drive customer traffic.

At Microsoft, Walmart's "preferred and strategic cloud provider," he was corporate vice president of its cloud infrastructure and operations. During his 15 years at Amazon in various leadership roles, Kumar's responsibilities included that of managing a global team of 500 engineers behind technology that runs Amazon’s pricing, promotions and other retail functions, his LinkedIn page shows.

Before Amazon, he was a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Walmart said.

“Suresh has a unique understanding of the intersection of technology and retail, including supply chain, and has deep experience in advertising, cloud and machine learning,” McMillon said in a statement.

While it’s no surprise that Kumar’s experience will likely serve Walmart well in its ecommerce fight against Amazon, his digital ad knowhow at Google also signals Walmart’s ambition to increase its share in the digital ad market dominated by Google, a Walmart partner on voice-assisted grocery shopping, and Facebook.

Walmart was scheduled to meet with large consumer goods giants and advertising firms for the first time in New York this week to pitch its advertising business, Reuters reported last week.

“As we think about new revenue and income streams, we know we can do more in the advertising space,” McMillon said in prepared quarterly earnings remarks this month. Walmart last month bought Silicon Valley-based startup, Polymorph Labs, to make it easier for brands to send more “relevant digital ads to customers,” McMillon said.

Advertising has also been a growth focus for Amazon, with different reports having shown that Amazon has stolen some of Google’s digital ad share especially with consumers increasingly beginning their product searches on its site.

Related on Forbes: Casper wants to be more than a mattress company

Let's block ads! (Why?)