Walmart's Store No. 8 Ventures Into Virtual-Reality Retail
*By Christian Smith*
In its relentless quest to improve shopping, Walmart is trying to recreate an in-store experience for online shoppers using virtual reality developed by Spatialand, a software start-up the retail giant acquired earlier this year.
VR may seem like a novelty, but Spatialand's CEO and the founder of Walmart's tech incubator Store No. 8, Katie Finnegan, said it may may be more mainstream in the near future.
"It's pretty similar when you look at the original smartphone or cell phone market, she said Wednesday in an interview with Cheddar. "Those were sort of novelties, as well."
Finnegan and Walmart hope that VR can enhance shopping for the company's millions of customers.
"Studies show that when you're immersed in it you actually retain, and actually understand and validate that information in a much better way than you could do just on a 2D screen, but also as you could do in a physical store," Finnegan said.
The company is already using VR to train its new sales associates by simulating challenging situations like November's dreaded Black Friday.
Eventually, Walmart plans to use VR to market more experiential products, which Finnegan separates from "consumables" like groceries and toiletries, for customers who may want a preview.
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/how-walmart-plans-to-use-vr-to-improve-the-customer-experience).
Renewable energy company Heliogen has gone public via a SPAC merger with blank check company Athena Technology Acquisition Corp. on the NYSE. Joining Cheddar, founder and CEO Bill Gross went into why he felt the end of 2021 was the best time to get into the public markets. "If you think of the Industrial Revolution and the digital revolution, this renewable revolution is probably going to be as big or larger than that," he said. "So we're going to use this capital to scale our business, to meet more customer demand, to do more projects in parallel, and to scale our research and development to continue to drive down the price to be competitive with fossil fuels."
Carl "The Moon" Runefelt, a Bitcoin investment expert, recently made a hefty purchase of a $2 million Bugatti sports car at a Dubai dealership. The Swedish crypto evangelist joined Cheddar to talk about how he made the big acquisition of a luxury item he had long had his eye on and why he chose the dealership, The Car Vault, to make the unprecedented transaction. "They accepted crypto directly, and that was important to me," he said. "I am not going to go to any car dealership that don't accept crypto, and that's kind of a principle I have today."
2021 proved that crypto currency is here to stay. This year saw more and more adoptions of crypto, from top athletes looking to be paid in bitcoin, to Elon Musk even experimenting with bitcoin and dogecoin payments for a bit over at Tesla. And it wasn't all bitcoin either - other cryptos like Cardano and Solana saw some action in 2021 as well. Patrick McConlogue, CEO of Overline and former Citadel Investment Group Engineer explains why 2021 was such a good year for crypto, and what to expect in 2022.
2021 saw markets continue to be impacted by the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic -most recently in the form of the Omicron variant- in addition to the global supply chain shortage, and increased inflation. But it wasn't all bad news, as crypto soared throughout the year, and meme stocks continued to have a moment. With the year coming to a close, investors are keeping an eye out to see if they should expect more of the same in the new year. Chris Vecchio, Senior Analyst, at DailyFX tells us what market trends to be on the watch for in 2022.
2021 proved to be yet another formidable year for Tesla. In a year that saw electric vehicles carve out their own space in the transportation world, the company made further strides, keeping its spot on top even as new companies threatened competition. Tesla was able to hit the trillion dollar valuation mark, increase vehicle deliveries even as the world grappled with supply chain and delivery issues and sign a major deal with Hertz this year. And of course, you can't talk about Tesla without talking about Elon Musk, CEO and founder of the company, richest man in the world and Time Magazine Person of the Year, who saw plenty of successes in 2021 as well. Al Root, Senior Writer at Barron’s, explains just how good a year it was for Tesla.
