The corner office at Walmart Inc. has long been one of the highest-paid gigs in retail — but the head honcho doesn’t always come out on top.
And so it was last year, when outgoing chief executive officer Doug McMillon logged total compensation of $29.2 million. That included a $1.5 million salary, $4 million in incentive pay and stock awards valued at $21.1 million as of their grant date.
But the highest-paid executive listed in Walmart’s annual proxy statement was Daniel Danker, executive vice president, AI acceleration, product and design, who joined the retailer last year after holding leading roles at Instacart and Uber.
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Danker was welcomed warmly with total compensation of $44.1 million, including a sign-on bonus of $5 million and stock awards valued at $37.7 million.
The payday was big, but not entirely surprising as new executives often receive big chunks of stock and other sweeteners.
And stock awards, at least theoretically, are intended to tie the executive’s pocketbook to the fortunes of investors as their value changes along with the price of the company’s shares. Walmart has been a good bet on Wall Street lately, rising more than 30 percent over the past 12 months and briefly trading with a market capitalization of more than $1 trillion this year.
There has also been a price war over AI brain power that has seen the tech giants pay up big time to bring the right talent on board.
Walmart is increasingly seeing itself as not just a retailer, but a technology play as well. Given its resources and size — revenues topped $713 billion last year — it is the only brick-and-mortar based retailer that can really compete with Amazon.
Clearly, Danker is going to play a big part in that competition.
He weighed in on Walmart’s approach to AI at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference last month.
“To be truly tech-powered, you need to invest in technology like a technology company. And I think Walmart has done that,” Danker said. “The creation of this role [leading AI at Walmart] is interesting because it reflects both the desire for growth and speed using technology that I think we can really make happen, but also a recognition that if we’re going to make the most of what AI can enable that it needs to be a role that sits at the exec council level alongside our business teams and other global functions as well.”
While AI inevitably sparks talk of cost cutting and efficiency, Danker said that’s really just the low-hanging fruit.
“It’s actually easier to figure out how to drive efficiency than it is to think through growth because you only have to look at the things you’re already doing,” he said. “Growth is much more interesting as a vector.
“There are things we wanted to do for customers for many years that we did not have the technology to do them with,” he said. “And all of a sudden, we have the technology now. And so I think that’s a much more exciting way to go. And it’s reflected in how we’re prioritizing. We view AI as something that will enable us to move faster and drive more growth. And that’s a big part of my focus.”
But Danker stressed Walmart’s “people-led and tech-powered” and assured investors that “those aren’t just words. They matter a lot.”
Now it’s up to Danker and the company’s new CEO, John Furner, to drive home just what that means and how the sentiment will shape the future.