Walmart to Offer Employees Training Through OpenAI Certification (www.pymnts.com)

Walmart will give U.S. frontline and office employees free access to OpenAI’s upcoming certification program when it launches in 2026, integrating the training into its Walmart Academy and tailoring content specifically for its workforce. As a launch partner, Walmart will work with OpenAI to adapt the program’s multi-level curriculum—which ranges from basic AI literacy to prompt engineering—and its preparation tools so the certification can slot into the retailer’s learning-and-development pipeline. Until the program goes live, employees can access AI training via Walmart’s Live Better U benefit and resources at ai.walmart.com. The move is significant because it signals large-scale, employer-led upskilling around practical AI use rather than just theoretical knowledge, embedding competency checks into workforce development. For the AI/ML community, this is a notable example of operationalizing model literacy and prompt engineering across nontechnical frontline roles, potentially driving standardized best practices and enterprise demand for certification-aligned tools. Walmart’s prior rollout of AI features—task prioritization, a 44-language real-time translation, and conversational support for customer-service workflows—illustrates the kinds of on-the-job applications the certification aims to support and scale.