Walmart Labs

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Walmart Labs
Subsidiary
Industry Internet
Retail
Founded Kosmix founded in Mountain View, California (2005)[citation needed]
@WalmartLabs (2011)[1]
Founder Venky Harinarayan (Kosmix)
Anand Rajaraman (Kosmix)
Headquarters San Bruno, California,
United States
Area served
 Worldwide
Key people
 Suresh Kumar (Chief technology officer)[2]
Products Websites and apps for Walmart and Sam's Club; Vudu; OneOps; Electrode[3][4][5]
Number of employees
 8,000 [6]
Parent Walmart

Walmart Labs (formerly named Kosmix and @WalmartLabs) became part of Walmart Global Tech,[7] the technology and business services organization within Walmart. Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman founded Kosmix in 2005.[8] In April 2011, Walmart acquired Kosmix and formed @WalmartLabs, a research division, out of it.[9][10] In 2016, Walmart combined Walmart Labs and its information systems division (ISD) into one team called Walmart Technology.[11] In August 2020, Walmart Technology launched its new identity as Walmart Global Tech as part of a new technology and shared services organization within the world's largest retailer.[12]

History

Kosmix

Harinarayan and Rajaraman were co-founders of Junglee, the first shopping search engine which was acquired by Amazon.com in 1998.[13] They later created Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk[14] and started an early-stage VC fund, Cambrian Ventures, that backed several companies later acquired by Google.[15]

Kosmix expanded its focus from vertical to a horizontal search engine in June 2008, covering all subjects.[16] For a key word or topic that a user enters, "Kosmix gathers content from across the Web to build a sort of multimedia encyclopedia entry on the fly. The company has built a taxonomy of nearly five million categories on a wide range of topics. The taxonomy includes millions of connections mapping the relationship among those categories."[17]

Growth

In June 2007, Kosmix announced a partnership with Revolution Health, in which Revolution Health will utilize Kosmix to enhance content searches on RevolutionHealth.com.[18]

Truveo announced in September 2007 that the company's video search engine is being used by Kosmix to present topic-relevant videos on its health site RightHealth, giving users a starting point to explore health topics.[19] As of March 2008, Kosmix' market-share had grown 730% year-over-year.[20] RightHealth was the #2 health site on the Web, according to Hitwise. Kosmix launched a personal news site called MeeHive in March, 2008 which is similar to Google News or My Yahoo!, but allows users to customize their interests to a greater degree.[17] Meehive was shut down in October 2010.[21] Kosmix launched tweetbeat in June 2010 as it entered the social media arena.[22]

In October 2009, Kosmix acquired Cruxlux, an engine designed to take any two people, places, or things and tell the user how they are connected. Cruxlux was founded in 2007 by Guha Jayachandran and Curtis Spencer and was in private beta at the time of the acquisition. The terms of the deal are mostly unknown, other than that it was made in both cash and stock.[23]

In April 2011, Kosmix announced a partnership with Ask The Doctor, in which their website AskTheDoctor.com would provide Q & A format medical content for Kosmix's website RightHealth.

Acquisition by Walmart

Kosmix was acquired by Walmart in April/May 2011 and became @WalmartLabs for a rumored amount of $300 million.[24][25] In June 2012, Harinarayan and Rajaraman announced that they would be leaving the company to take some time off, with no immediate plans.[26]

In June 2013, Walmart bought predictive intelligence startup Inkiru to add analytics capabilities.[27] In June 2018, Walmart announced it would hire 2,000 additional employees into Walmart Labs to improve the company's online grocery shopping platform.[6] In July 2019, it acquired health tech startup FloCare and B2B wholesale trading platform BigTrade to bolster its customer service.[28][29]

Walmart Global Tech

Walmart Global Tech develops and manages the foundational technologies on which Walmart Inc.'s customer experiences are built, including cloud, data, enterprise architecture, DevOps, infrastructure and security. The tech organization powers Walmart Inc. and its business units, including Walmart U.S., Sam's Club and Walmart International. It is also a world-class enterprise services organization that develops solutions to help 2.3 million Walmart and Sam’s Club associates work and live better. Walmart Global Tech is led by Suresh Kumar, Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Development Officer for Walmart Inc.[30]

Notes

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External links

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  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Goodbye, Kosmix. Hello, @WalmartLabs Archived November 6, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  10. ↑ Wal-Mart's Silicon Valley unit develops new search engine to battle eBay, Amazon - San Jose Mercury News Archived November 4, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Ranganathan, Chandra and NS Ramnath. "Men Who Spurn Google create Kosmix" The Economic Times. 30 October 2007. Retrieved on 17 March 2009.
  16. ↑ Hendrickson, Mark. "Kosmix Goes Horizontal" TechCrunch. 25 June 2008. Retrieved 25 March 2009 Archived January 25, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Helft, Michael. "Just Don't Compare Kosmix to Google" The New York Times. 14 March 2009. Retrieved on 18 March 2009.
  18. ↑ "Kosmix Partners with Revolution Health to Bring Consumers the Most Relevant Health Content on the Web" Businessweek.com. 26 June 2007. Retrieved 25 March 2009. Archived September 2, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  19. ↑ "Truveo Partners with Kosmix to Help Consumers Easily Find Topic Specific Health Videos" Business Wire, 6 September 2007. Retrieved 25 March 2009.
  20. ↑ Buley, Taylor. "Life After Google" Forbes.com. 24 March 2009. Retrieved 25 March 2009.
  21. ↑ Kosmix Kills Off MeeHive's Custom News Service As It Focuses On TweetBeat | TechCrunch Archived October 13, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  22. ↑ Kosmix Unleashes Its Realtime Tweetbeat On The World Cup | TechCrunch Archived July 28, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  23. ↑ Kincaid, Jason. “Kosmix Acquires Cruxlux, The Online Version Of 'Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon'” TechCrunch. 19 Oct 2009. Retrieved 25 March 2010 Archived August 28, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  24. ↑ Datawocky: Goodbye, Kosmix. Hello, @WalmartLabs Archived February 9, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
  25. ↑ Wal-Mart Stores Paid $300 Million for Social Site Kosmix - Kara Swisher - News - AllThingsD Archived May 6, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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