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Meet the new CEO of Sam’s Club: Latriece Watkins. As you’ll hear from my interview with Watkins this week’s episode of Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies podcast, she is a Walmart veteran, who began her career in the real estate division in 2006. Over the next two decades, she rose up through the ranks to become Walmart’s chief merchant in 2023, making her one of the most powerful people in the retail industry, responsible for choosing the $500 billion worth of products the retailer sells every year. In recent years, Watkins has made a deliberate attempt to woo higher income consumers into stores by introducing higher-end brands, like Sonos and LaRoche Posay, as well as elevating its fashion, home and food private labels. Her team’s product curation appears to be working: In recent quarters, Walmart’s has been gaining market share among households that make upwards of $100,000 a year. Now, Watkins has been tasked with running Walmart’s membership club, which generated $90.2 billion in net sales across its 600 stores in 2024 making up roughly 13% of Walmart’s total revenue. In many ways, her promotion makes sense, since Sam’s Club customers tend to be more affluent than those from Walmart. Watkins has proven she’s skilled at meeting these needs of these customers. Watkins is now tasked with stealing market share from CostCo, the biggest player in the membership warehouse club industry, which generated $269.9 billion last year, an 8.1% increase over the year before. Part of CostCo’s success has come from its private label, Kirkland, which now drives roughly a third of its total revenue. Watkins is skilled at developed successful private labels. It was under her leadership that Walmart launched its first new private label grocery brand in two decades, called Bettergoods. Every aspect of the brand from its chic, colorful packaging to its focus on global flavors was carefully designed to win over today’s consumers. And yet 90% of products in the line cost under $5. Sam’s Club has its own private label called Member’s Mark, which also generates about a third of its revenue. Part of Watkins’ mission will no doubt be to ensure that Member’s Mark grows as a business, and continues to evolve to keep pace with changing consumer tastes. In some ways, Watkins has the opportunity to be more experimental at Sam’s Club than she was at Walmart. As a smaller, nimbler brand, Sam’s Club has become something of an innovation lab to test out retail concepts that, if successful, may be adopted by Walmart. For instance, in 2024, Sam’s Club unveiled cashierless checkouts in a few stores: Customers simply scan products themselves on their Sam’s Club app, pay for them using their credit card, then walk out the door. (Entrances now have arches equipped with computer vision to check what’s in a person’s cart, avoiding manual receipt checking.) Sam’s Club also tries things out with its private labels. In 2022, it set out to remove 40 potentially harmful ingredients in the Member’s Mark line a goal it achieved last week. Walmart used learnings from this process to make Bettergoods products without these ingredients as well. Watkins has helped Walmart navigate through difficult times, from a volatile economy to new tariffs to inflation. She’s well-equipped to steer Sam’s Club through these choppy waters.
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E-Commerce
During the Hollywood strikes of 2023, a major sticking point for members of the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA was artificial intelligence. When the unions ultimately came to an agreement with Hollywood studios, they won key protections for actors regarding digital replicas and guardrails for how generative AI could be used in writers rooms. The stipulation that studios could not create digital replicas of actorsat least not without their consentreflects growing concerns over how AI might compromise the livelihoods of artists and creatives. Now it seems some performers may be looking for new ways to protect themselves against more general misuse: A January 13 Wall Street Journal report revealed that actor Matthew McConaughey filed eight trademark applications that are intended to deter unauthorized AI-generated simulations of his voice or likeness. The trademarks, which have been approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, include several video clips of McConaughey, along with one of his most iconic moments: audio of him saying, Alright, alright, alright, a line from the 1993 movie Dazed and Confused that has since become a catchphrase. My team and I want to know that when my voice or likeness is ever used, its because I approved and signed off on it, McConaughey told The Journal. We want to create a clear perimeter around ownership with consent and attribution the norm in an AI world. McConaughey has reason to take preemptive action. AI has already enabled fraudulent ads that used the likeness of actors like Tom Hanks to promote wonder drugs. Just this week, there was a deepfake video circulating on the internet that featured eerily realistic face swaps with the cast of Stranger Thingsan example of how easily AI can be exploited by virtually anyone. The video has more than 15 million views (and counting) on X. Another creator shared a similar video using the likeness of Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street. By trademarking himself, McConaughey is looking to prevent this kind of content from being monetized. From a legal perspective, Orly Lobela law professor and the director of the Center for Employment and Labor Policy at the University of San Diegosays this is a novel way to combat deepfakes. The traditional name and likeness protections under state law, otherwise known as publicity rights, are meant to protect against the unauthorized use of an actors image to sell products. But those laws are inadequate in the new era of generative AI, according to Lobel, since AI content can be monetized on the internet; there is less clarity on what constitutes commercial use on those platforms. McConaugheys decision to trademark his voice and likeness is a hybrid approach and it elevates the protections to federal claims, Lobel says. Even McConaugheys lawyersamong them prominent entertainment attorney Kevin Yornhave noted that theyre not entirely sure whether this measure of protection would hold up in court. I dont know what a court will say in the end, Yorn told the Journal. But we have to at least test this. A trademark also primarily protects commercial use, though McConaugheys lawyers seem to think the risk of federal claims may act as a deterrent and discourage people from creating any kind of AI-generated content with his likeness. Still, this could set a precedent for other actors and performers to take similar action at a time when creatives are fighting an uphill battle against the use of AIand gearing up for another contract negotiation that will likely revive a number of AI-related concerns. I think [this] is a signal that actors and others want attribution and consent and are ready to fight back, Lobel says.
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E-Commerce
The data centers that power the AI boom also need power themselves and a lot of it. Now, the Trump administration wants the tech companies cashing in on AI to foot a bigger part of the bill. The Trump administration said Friday that it would urge major East Coast power grid operator PJM Interconnection to hold an emergency auction for tech companies, inviting them to bid on 15-year contracts for new electricity generation. Under the plan, the power auction would raise billions of dollars that would then go directly toward building out $15 billion in new power plants. Tech companies would be locked into paying for the power they buy at auction over the lifetime of the long-term contracts whether they wind up using the electricity or not, a measure designed to smooth out spikes in electricity costs and offer 15-year revenue certainty for new plants. The governors of Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and Pennsylvania and other states in PJMs area also signed onto the proposal to remake Americas power supply. U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum also supported the plan, which urges the power grid operator to make changes but isnt binding. For two years, Ive been sounding the alarm, explaining that without fundamental changes to PJM Pennsylvanians were going to be paying more and more, and getting nothing in return, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said in a press release. …Ive been working with my fellow governors and federal energy officials to push PJM to make needed reforms, and Im glad the White House is following Pennsylvanias lead and adopting the solutions weve been pushing for. In a fact sheet on the proposal published to the Department of Energys website, the Trump administration is also encouraging PJM to cap what existing power plants charge in an effort to pass along savings to residential power users. The Department of Energy described the measures as temporary, noting that the changes could stave off painful future price increases and make blackouts less likely. Worries grow over resource-hungry AI Acknowledging the growing backlash around AI data centers, Microsoft also announced a new initiative this week that it claims will protect residential customers from eating the cost of its AI buildout. The tech giant says it will work closely with utility companies on the price of electricity, likening its AI expansion to other historic national infrastructure improvements like canals, railroads, the electrical grid, or the interstate highway system. Communities value new jobs and property tax revenue, but not if they come with higher power bills or tighter water supplies, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith wrote in a blog post. Without addressing these issues directly, even supportive communities will question the role of datacenters in their backyard. Trump hinted at Microsofts plan earlier this week in a Truth Social post, stating that new policies would ensure Americans dont pick up the tab for higher energy bills. I never want Americans to pay higher Electricity bills because of Data Centers, Trump wrote. …We are the HOTTEST Country in the World, and Number One in AI. Data Centers are key to that boom, and keeping Americans FREE and SECURE but, the big Technology Companies who build them must pay their own way. Americans are starting to blame AI for high bills In the AI arms race, techs hottest companies often frame their insatiable appetite for electricity as an inevitability rather than its own problem. But as the cost of electricity goes up, Americans may disagree. Tech giants are pouring billions into massive electricity and water-guzzling server warehouses to fuel their AI ambitions. In 2025 alone, five companies making big bets on AI invested $399 billion into the technology and its accompanying infrastructure, and that number is expected to shoot up to $600 billion by 2028. Those investments have also prompted broad concerns that the stock markets concentrated growth around AI represents a single point of failure if the industry starts to wobble. Other worries are much less theoretical. Americans are grappling with higher power bills and theyre starting to blame the tech industry. A nationwide survey last year found that two-thirds of those polled believe that AI is driving up their electricity bill and most said that they couldnt afford a $20 per month increase. Beyond power, data centers also need massive amounts of water for cooling all of those servers humming day and night. In The Dalles, Oregon, city officials are seeking to buy part of a nearby national forest to get access to more water a move that is alarming some residents and environmental groups. While officials have claimed the water will meet growing population demands, Google is The Dalles thirstiest resident and the tech companys data centers already consume a third of the citys water.
Category:
E-Commerce
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