Walmart is expanding Scintilla, its first-party data and analytics platform for suppliers, with new tools designed to unify marketplace, customer and supply-chain insights. Announced at the Walmart Data Ventures Inspire conference, the upgrades are expected to arrive next year.
What’s coming to Scintilla
The new capabilities cover several areas:
- Marketplace data: first-party Walmart suppliers that also sell on Walmart.com will be able to view their marketplace performance alongside their core Walmart business.
- Customizable dashboards: teams can connect sales, customer behaviour and supply-chain data in a single view.
- Custom alerts: users can set signals for changes in business performance.
- Deeper Marty AI assistant: the assistant will move from explaining metrics and summarizing reports to making recommendations.
- Tighter integrations: Scintilla will link more closely with the Scintilla In-Store supplier app and Walmart’s replenishment systems.
Mark Hardy, head of Walmart Data Ventures, described the update as “one consistent approach” to collaborating with suppliers and, eventually, marketplace sellers. He said the goal is to give partners full visibility so Walmart can align the right business and customer experiences across channels.
From dashboards to next best actions
The AI shift matters for marketing and e-commerce teams. Today, Scintilla’s AI is mostly used to explain what a metric means, highlight changes in a report, or summarize findings. The expanded assistant is meant to look across all data sets and recommend what to do, for example flagging why customers are lapsing and suggesting supply-chain or advertising actions to address it.
Hardy said the platform is taking AI from “summarizing findings” to “making recommendations,” helping users bring data points together and arrive at a clearer next step.
That is the bigger story for retail and brand teams. Many data tools are still reporting-oriented; Scintilla’s move pushes the workflow toward prescriptive decisioning. For suppliers, that could mean faster trade, pricing, inventory and retail media adjustments based on a connected view of demand and operations.
Who gets access
For now, Scintilla remains unavailable to sellers that operate only on Walmart’s marketplace, and a Walmart spokesperson said there are no current plans to open it to that group. But Walmart is gradually widening access. Last month, the company said it plans to bring the platform to Sam’s Club suppliers in the U.S. next year. In February, Walmart launched Scintilla In-Store, a new version of Volt, the store-execution platform Walmart acquired in 2022, to give supplier field representatives visibility into store-level data.
Walmart clarified that the change gives sellers a view of their own Walmart.com customers, not what all shoppers are buying at Walmart.
Amit Dodeja, CMO of e-commerce accelerator Spreetail, said proprietary marketplace data makes it easier for brands to understand what is working in areas such as advertising and pricing. He called the move “a wise move” and said it strengthens seller confidence in the platform.
What marketing teams should do
Suppliers and agency teams working with Walmart should treat this as more than a product update. It signals that Walmart is building a data collaboration layer across its formats and supply chain. Teams can prepare by:
- Aligning retail media, ecommerce and supply-chain metrics before the features roll out.
- Reviewing how first-party data is shared across internal teams and external partners.
- Testing whether AI recommendations are integrated into weekly commercial planning, not left in a dashboard.
Walmart CFO John David Rainey said on the company’s most recent earnings call that Walmart Data Ventures “continues to drive meaningful growth,” though the company does not disclose the division’s revenue. The platform’s value, he said, is in enhanced decision intelligence that uncovers shared growth opportunities across Walmart’s formats and markets.
Source: Digiday
