In early December 2019, Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon shared his vision for the retail giant’s future with the company’s executives. That vision would include superstores at the center of the business, while numerous other ventures would add complementary components. In this plan, Walmart would capitalize on its customer data by selling online advertising to brands; it would build edge-computing capabilities to use internally and also rent those computing capabilities to other companies; it would add warehouse and shipping capabilities, whichc ould also be sold to third-party sellers on its online marketplace. Walmart would potentially even partner with telecom companies to offer 5G. McMillon had told investors earlier that month, “The supercenter foot print and positioning gives us the great opportunity to expand services and help the economics of the model.” It appearst hat what Walmart is considering building is a modified, physical store-based version of the “ecosystem” model. It isn’t alone, but compared to companies around the world that are attempting to build an online-first ecosystem,Walmart’s plans seem almost quaint. Globally, numerous new and established companies are attempting to follow in the footsteps of Alibaba, Amazon and Tencent’s WeChat in building a group of interconnected online and-offline products and services with the goal of capturing consumers’ time, attention, money and data.