Walmart will close three U.S. tech hubs

Following an earlier Wall Street Journal article, the retail behemoth Walmart confirmed that its technological hubs in Austin, Carlsbad, and Portland, Oregon, are closing.

Because the firm "made the choice to focus their tech team's presence inside selected areas," the store said its Global Tech team will no longer be based in those three cities.

According to the WSJ, Walmart will pay for employees in those three sites to relocate to other offices, such one in San Bruno, California, or Bentonville, Arkansas, where the store is based.

The majority of the worldwide tech team will also need to spend at least two days every week in the office, according to the publication.

The closures come after widespread layoffs in the tech sector. According to Crunchbase news, more than 77,000 American employees at tech-based enterprises have been let go so far in 2023. Amazon increased the number of staff it intended to lay off early this year from 10,000 to more than 18,000, blaming an "uncertain environment."

“Walmart Global Tech develops and manages the foundational technologies on which customer experiences are built, including cloud, data, enterprise architecture, DevOps, infrastructure and security,” Kumar wrote in a corporate blog post. “We’re also a world-class enterprise services organization that develops solutions to help 2.3 million Walmart and Sam’s Club associates work and live better.”