How Walmart’s Alphabot Is Quietly Powering the Future of Online Shopping

Walmart is stepping into the future—and leading the way is a robot called Alphabot. Tucked inside high-tech Market Fulfillment Centers (MFCs), Alphabot spends its days zipping around, picking products for online orders with incredible speed. In fact, over 95% of orders are picked in under 12 minutes.

It’s part of a much bigger push by Walmart to stay competitive in the delivery game, especially against heavyweights like Amazon and Target. From drone deliveries to automated warehouses, the company is going all in on tech to make shopping faster, smarter, and more convenient.

A Smarter Way to Fulfill Orders

Walmart’s Market Fulfillment Centers are small but mighty. Each one is attached to a Supercenter (often six times its size) and designed to hold thousands of the most popular products—everything from garlic to 24-packs of soda. These MFCs are built for speed, efficiency, and accuracy.

By storing inventory separately from the main sales floor, Walmart can avoid crowding, reduce picking errors, and keep in-store shoppers and online orders from getting in each other’s way.

Here’s where Alphabot comes in. Think of it as a warehouse on wheels—175 of them, actually. These bots glide across a 3D grid, moving in all directions to retrieve items and bring them to associates stationed at picking stations. Instead of walking miles across the store, employees stay put while the items come to them. Guided by lights and sensors, they simply grab the item and place it into the correct bin.

The result? Faster packing, fewer mistakes, and a system that scales without slowing down.

Where Speed Meets Convenience

Once all the items in an order are gathered, they’re scanned, labeled, and sorted by temperature—room temp, fridge, and freezer items are consolidated in one spot. Any hand-picked items from the store are added here too.

From there, your order is ready to go. You can pick it up yourself, have it delivered by a Walmart driver, or—if you live in certain areas—even get it dropped off by drone.

What makes this all possible is Walmart’s massive network. With over 4,600 stores across the U.S., and more than 4,000 offering same-day delivery, the company is closer to more customers than almost anyone else. That local presence is a serious advantage when it comes to fulfilling online orders quickly.

While Target is investing in separate facilities to handle fulfillment, Walmart is doing the opposite—transforming existing stores into mini fulfillment hubs. It’s a clever way to save on costs while making use of assets they already have.

Betting Big on Automation

Walmart is far from done. In addition to expanding its network of over 100 Market Fulfillment Centers, it’s also building massive, fully automated fulfillment centers—what it calls next-gen FCs. Three are already up and running, with more on the way. Each one spans 1.5 million square feet and is designed to handle next-day and two-day shipping for 95% of the U.S. population.

The idea is to blend both strategies: use small, local MFCs for speed and convenience, and large-scale hubs for nationwide reach.

But faster isn’t always better—timing matters too. Sometimes customers want their items delivered at a specific time, not just as soon as possible. Walmart is working on being not just fast, but predictably fast, meeting customers on their terms.

What This Means for Workers

Of course, all this automation is changing how people work. Walmart, as the largest private employer in the U.S., is setting the tone for what warehouse and retail jobs could look like in the future.

Instead of walking 8 to 10 miles a day and moving heavy cases, employees are learning to become cell operators and maintenance techs—roles that require creativity, tech skills, and quick problem-solving.

Not everyone’s on board just yet. Some workers feel uneasy about the shift. It’s a big change, and it’s not always easy to imagine yourself in a new kind of job. But Walmart says it’s not cutting jobs—just evolving them.

Building Toward the Perfect Order

At the heart of it all is one big goal: the perfect order. Walmart wants your stuff to arrive fast, in one piece, in the right-sized box, and packed sustainably. They’re investing in automation and smarter logistics to make that happen—from AI-powered forecasting to recyclable packaging.

Yes, Amazon still dominates e-commerce. But Walmart is bigger overall—and unlike Amazon, it already has a coast-to-coast network of physical stores. That’s a serious edge.

The race is far from over. Both companies are betting on different strengths, and shoppers (like you and me) will ultimately decide what works.