Walmart CEO Doug McMillon to retire in January

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon is retiring early next year, after overseeing the top U.S. retailer’s transformation into an e-commerce behemoth, the company said Friday in a filing.

The longtime CEO will be succeeded by John Furner, the Walmart U.S. CEO, on Feb. 1, according to the filing.

McMillon, who stepped into the top role at Walmart in February 2014, will officially retire as of Jan. 31. He will continue to serve as an executive officer of the company and be employed by Walmart as an advisor through Jan. 31, 2027.

Furner, 51, has been the CEO of Walmart’s U.S. business since 2019. In that role, he oversees more than 4,600 stores and the largest sector of the company. He started at the company in 1993 as an hourly associate.

The announcement of the CEO transition comes only six days before the retailer is set to report quarterly earnings. Walmart shares were up 13% this year as of Thursday’s close, as the company grows its digital business and wins over more high-income shoppers.

For more than a decade, McMillon, 59, has led the retail giant and overseen the company’s growth as an e-commerce leader. He also oversaw the business during a tumultuous time marked by the Covid pandemic, supply chain disruptions, high inflation and tariff changes.

During his time leading the company, Walmart’s shares have risen more than 300%. The company’s stock closed Friday at $102.48, roughly flat.

McMillon and Furner have had similar paths to the top role at Walmart. Both have spent about three decades at Walmart. They both began as hourly associates and moved up the ranks at the retail giant, serving in merchandising and operations roles. Both also served as chief executives of its warehouse club, Sam’s Club.

In a statement, Walmart chairman Greg Penner described Furner as “the right leader to guide Walmart into the next chapter of our growth and transformation.”

“After starting as an hourly associate and being with us for over 30 years in a variety of leadership roles across all three of our operating segments, John understands every dimension of our business – from the sales floor to global strategy,” Penner added.

“Serving as Walmart’s CEO has been a great honor and I’m thankful to our Board and the Walton family for the opportunity,” McMillon said in a statement.

He said Furner’s “curiosity and digital acumen combined with a deep commitment to our people and culture will enable him to take us to the next level.”

Along with Walmart, big-box competitor Target is also poised to get a new leader in early 2026. Target announced last month that Michael Fiddelke, chief operating officer and former chief financial officer, will succeed longtime Target CEO Brian Cornell on Feb. 1.

As the leader of Walmart, McMillon played an instrumental role in turning the nation’s largest grocer into an e-commerce giant and positioning the company to sell more advertisements and more discretionary merchandise, along with dozens of eggs and gallons of milk.

During his early years as CEO, McMillon greenlit the $3.3 billion acquisition of Jet.com in 2016, an e-commerce startup that Walmart hoped would fuel digital growth and give it credibility as it tried to fight back against Amazon’s meteoric rise.

The startup’s acquisition — particularly its steep price tag — prompted debates in retail circles about whether the retail giant had overpaid for the asset and if that move was needed to help Walmart navigate a rocky entry into the world of e-commerce. Yet the deal gained Walmart talent with digital know-how, particularly Jet.com founder and serial entrepreneur Marc Lore who had sold his previous company, Quidsi, the parent of Diapers.com, to Amazon and worked for Amazon for years.

During Lore’s years as leader of Walmart’s U.S. e-commerce business, Walmart bought digital native businesses including menswear company Bonobos and birthed other in-house concepts, such as mattress brand Allswell. Walmart later sold Bonobos and other digital businesses, and shuttered Jet.com in 2020.

Though the Jet.com deal did not meet some Wall Street investors’ expectations, McMillon on a call with analysts at the time credited the acquisition for “jump-starting the progress we have made the last few years” in digital growth and curbside pickup and delivery.

Over the past five years, Walmart has leaned on its membership program, Walmart+, and its third-party marketplace as it tries to fend off Amazon’s e-commerce dominance. It launched Walmart+, its own subscription service and its answer to Amazon Prime, in 2020 and has continued to add perks like streaming through Paramount+.

Through its third-party marketplace, it has bulked up its merchandise offerings on virtual shelves by leaning on independent sellers to provide its customers with a wider range of clothing items, beauty brands and even luxury handbags. The model, which mirrored Amazon’s approach, also allowed Walmart to make money in new ways, such as selling ads and fulfillment services to sellers.

A CNBC investigation earlier this year found Walmart’s marketplace boom came as it made it easier than Amazon did over time for sellers to join the platform. CNBC uncovered at least 43 vendors who had taken the identity of another business to sell on Walmart’s marketplace, and some of those accounts were offering counterfeit beauty products.

Elsewhere in the company, McMillon also shook up Walmart’s pay structure for its hundreds of thousands of employees, announcing in 2015 that the company would give a raise to half a million hourly employees and increase wages to $9 an hour — a move that at the time faced sharp criticism on Wall Street.

In more recent years, Walmart has hiked wages multiple more times. But it has faced persistent criticism from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and other politicians who have argued the company has failed to share enough of its profits with hourly employees through pay and benefits.

As the nation’s largest private employer, Walmart has also been closely watched as the rise of artificial intelligence brings workforce changes and could threaten employment.

McMillon recently said that AI “is going to change literally every job.”

In a statement, McMillon referred to the growth of AI being a new dynamic facing his successor. And, he said, Furner is “uniquely capable of leading the company through this next AI-driven transformation.”