Walmart Gets Serious About Virtual Reality With New Acquisition

Walmart seems to be hoping that virtual reality will someday transform how we shop online and even in brick-and-mortar stores. That’s why the company wants to be ready when that happens. To that end, it has reportedly acquired a virtual reality startup called Spatialand to be at the center of its VR efforts. Walmart already has a relationship with this company as Spatialand has previously been working with Walmart’s Store No. 8 technology incubator.

Spatialand develops tools that enable creators to transform any existing content into immersive virtual reality experiences. It has worked with Walmart’s technology incubator in the past and will now be folded into that group as part of a new virtual reality company that will be led by Katie Finnegan as interim CEO. Finnegan was previously overseeing the incubator.

Finnegan has said in an interview that this new VR firm is going to be focused on developing retail experiences that may not be mainstream before five to ten years, without really giving away any specifics about the projects that the Spatialand team will be working on for Walmart.

She has also said that Spatialand’s projects may not be made public for up to 19 months which means we have to wait for over a year to find out just what it’s going to be working on.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: Virtual Reality (VR), walmart