S&P Global

Walmart Raises Guidance After 38% Ads Growth

Walmart reported a strong quarter driven by advertising and ecommerce, with global ad revenue up 38% and U.S. Walmart Connect growth of 43% (excluding Vizio). Total revenue was $187.9 billion, a 5.9% year-over-year increase, and adjusted EPS beat estimates. The company raised its full-year adjusted EPS guidance to $2.80–$2.87. Walmart recently closed its acquisition of CTV platform Vibe.co and plans to fold it into Walmart Connect to extend first-party commerce data and measurement into streaming; the retailer also owns Vizio from a 2024 deal. Walmart is scaling AI capabilities through its Sparky shopping agent (users up 70% year-over-year; Sparky users spend 40% more per order). Leadership cited tariff refunds and regulatory headwinds but emphasized the strategic value of integrating shopping, media, and streaming.

Japan Bond Market May Signal Risk to AI Stock Rally

Rising global bond yields — led by moves in Japan’s long-term debt — threaten the AI-driven equity rally by increasing financing costs and lowering the present value of future earnings. The piece highlights that U.S. 30-year Treasury yields hit multi-decade highs amid large Treasury issuance, a $1.8 trillion year-to-date U.S. deficit and near-$40 trillion national debt, while Japan faces acute energy import dependence, fiscal strain and a weakening yen. Market participants should watch Japan’s 30-year bonds, USD/JPY, upcoming central bank meetings (including the Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve) and data releases such as Japan CPI and S&P Global PMIs for signals on whether rising yields will derail the tech-led rally.

a16z Invests in Vals

a16z announces its partnership/investment in Vals, a startup that builds domain-focused, workflow-based benchmarks and automated grading systems to evaluate AI models on real-world tasks. Vals works with domain experts to convert actual workflows (legal research, financial document analysis, coding, etc.) into rigorous, continuously refreshed benchmarks, runs secure private test sets, and operates an evaluation infrastructure that produces results quickly and reproducibly. The company retires saturated tests and introduces new benchmarks as models improve (for example, swapping CorpFin for an Excel Modelling Benchmark in May). Founders Rayan Krishnan and Langston Nashold, both Stanford computer science alumni, lead Vals. a16z states this partnership aims to create an independent, trusted evaluation layer for the AI market.