After making a handful of recent acquisitions, Walmart is hungry for more, with its CEO of U.S. eCommerce revealing that the company is looking to buy startups in the technology, retail and digital native brands categories.
TechCrunch reported the news that Marc Lore made the remarks during an appearance at The Wall Street Journal‘s annual tech conference. The founder of Jet.com, Lore joined Walmart last year as the CEO of eCommerce after it paid more than $3 billion for the fast-growing startup.
Since then, Walmart has purchased a variety of retail startups, including ShoeBuy, Moosejaw, Bonobos, Parcel, Hayneedle and ModCloth.
“Specialist positioning is better than mass,” said Lore. “We’ve empowered the leaders of these companies to basically run the category across the entire entity.”
And earlier this year, Walmart announced the formation of Store No. 8, an internal effort at building their own online retail startups in house. The venture will be tasked with finding the cutting edge of technology that could be useful to Walmart’s total retail goals, as well as to create relationships with entrepreneurs, particularly those working in AI and other emerging tech.
Of course, Lore also spoke about Walmart’s competition with Amazon, where he spent several years after the eCommerce giant bought his company, Diapers.com maker Quidsi.
Some of the goals Walmart has been pursuing to compete with Amazon include building up its capabilities to offer faster deliveries throughout the country, with Lore noting that it already has the infrastructure to do overnight delivery for 87 percent of the country.
In the meantime, the CEO says everyone should expect Walmart to “crush it over the next two years,” and that he “wouldn’t trade our position with anyone right now.”