Quick Take — Carrefour relies on ChatGPT to win new customers

Carrefour becomes the first European food retailer to launch an application on ChatGPT, allowing users to compose shopping trolleys by drawing on its offer directly through OpenAI’s chatbot…

AI is one of the main pillars of the plan unveiled in February by CEO Alexandre Bompard, which aims for a 25% market share in France by 2030, up from 22% today.

Carrefour had already launched its chatbot Hopla based on ChatGPT in 2023, and announced in early 2024 a partnership with Google to enable shopping via the AI agent Gemini.

A third of French cyber shoppers already use AI during their online purchases, according to an Odoxa study for Fevad published in February…

In Europe, only Lidl seems to be banking on AI.

Confirmation of the German giant’s orientation by Martin Brandenburger, CEO of Lidl Italy, can be found here.

Below: Google is a historical partner of Carrefour.

Quick Take — Walmart launches new payment experience with ChatGPT

Walmart has launched a ChatGPT-based experience that will allow shoppers to find products in AI-based chat and then purchase them in a personalised Walmart environment, OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, said this week.

According to the company, this initiative links the product search functionality within ChatGPT to shoppers’ accounts, loyalty programmes and payments with Walmart. The experience is available via web browser and will also be launched with access via iOS and Android apps.

Walmart’s new ChatGPT-based experience represents a change from the retailer’s previous OpenAI strategy. In October 2025 , Walmart had announced a partnership with OpenAI to allow its customers to shop using Instant Checkout on ChatGPT. Walmart’s latest move marks a step back from Instant Checkout functionality….

Source

I had written on the subject here

Giorgia Meloni and Coldiretti put the brakes on the development of solar energy in Italy

The government, on energy, is in a huge conflict of interest, which is why prices do not fall: Snam, Italgas and Terna beat Microsoft, Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook). Italy’s publicly controlled companies that transport or distribute gas and electricity to citizens and businesses are more profitable than some of the world’s largest, most technologically advanced and important companies in the business of the future: cloud, data centres and artificial intelligence. In short, Big Energy beats Big Tech

AI Agents in Retail: the silent revolution in large-scale retail

McKinsey estimates that retailers with autonomous AI systems are growing 50 per cent faster than competitors. Cognizant projects $4.4 trillion in additional spending over the next five years from customers embracing AI. Agents are not an investment in the future of retail, they are already the present, and those who delay to act today risk having to make up for a hard-to-fill disadvantage tomorrow

Quick Take — Amazon: e-commerce malfunctions due to AI?

The red alert is said to have been raised immediately after a malfunction of the ecommerce site that occurred in early March and lasted for about six hours, during which customers were unable to complete transactions or use certain specific functions such as checking the price of products or accessing their profile on the site. According to the Financial Times , this is just the latest episode in a long series of malfunctions caused precisely by errors introduced by Q, the artificial intelligence assistant for computer code development that was chosen by the tech giant. A tool that, together with Kira – the assistant employed instead by Amazon Web Services, the subsidiary that deals with cloud services -, seems to have been adopted by all Amazon developers.

How Walmart became an advertising powerhouse while remaining focused on the food, non-food and e-commerce business

It is a pity that no Italian company has had the size but above all the vision to approach the world as these giants have done. In Italy everyone thought: e-commerce must be sustainable on its own. It happened to Esselunga at home until it had no rivals, but Amazon and Walmart disprove this vision. E-commerce is sustained by other, more profitable revenues

Quick Take — DoorDash – which owns Deliveroo – ended 2025 as the leading third-party marketplace by order volume in the US food and retail sector

DoorDash makes home deliveries but also does Quick Commerce . It works with large chains from McDonald’s to Walmart. It offers service to restaurants to build their online presence and handle direct orders. In 2025 it acquired Deliveroo.

...An integration with ChatGPT now allows users to go from browsing recipes in their AI-based conversations directly to the DoorDash shopping cart..

Marketplace gross order value reached $29.7 billion in the quarter (*), an increase of 39%. Net income attributable to ordinary shareholders was $213 million, up 51% year-on-year, and adjusted EBITDA grew 38% to $780 million..

The company ended 2025 with over 56 million monthly active users and over 35 million paying subscribers through its DashPass, Wolt and Deliveroo Plus subscription programmes… Progressive Grocer

(*) if you multiply by 4 it makes $118.8 billion

Compiled 25 February, updated 26 February 2026

Jensen Huang (Nvidia) on China and the US

We are witnessing in real time the biggest shift in global economic power. While America debates tariffs, summons its own Fed Chairman to a hearing and spends $380 billion on AI infrastructure with no measurable returns…China has just implemented the most aggressive industrial strategy since the Marshall Plan…
China is building the future. America, unfortunately, seems to be merely discussing it.