A senior Walmart executive has urged the United States to accelerate its artificial intelligence workforce training, arguing that China’s decision to introduce AI tools to children as young as five should serve as a wake-up call. The comments arrive as the federal government and major corporations, Walmart included, have pledged to certify 10 million workers in AI skills by 2030. The gap between that ambition and what China is already doing in classrooms raises a pointed question: is the U.S. moving fast enough to stay competitive?
Walmart Executive Points to China’s Head Start
The Walmart executive framed the challenge bluntly, stating that the U.S. workforce needs to take inspiration from China, where “5-year-olds are learning DeepSeek.” That reference to DeepSeek, a Chinese AI platform that gained global attention for its open-weight large language models, signals how deeply AI literacy has penetrated China’s education system. The executive’s argument is not that the U.S. should copy Beijing’s centralized approach, but that American employers and schools are falling behind a rival that treats AI fluency as a basic skill rather than an advanced specialization.
China’s investment in early AI education is not new. Reporting by New York Times correspondents documented the country’s heavy spending on AI research and school-level programs designed to build technical competence from a young age. What has changed since that reporting is the scale: Chinese tech firms now embed their own AI products into curricula, creating a pipeline of users and developers that starts well before college. The Walmart executive’s remarks suggest that U.S. corporate leaders are watching this pipeline grow and worrying about the long-term talent consequences.
Federal Commitments and the 10 Million Target
The U.S. government has responded to the AI skills gap with a coalition strategy. A White House initiative brought together major organizations, including Walmart, around a shared pledge to support AI education for 10 million workers by 2030. That target spans partnerships “from Walmart to small businesses,” according to the White House, and reflects a recognition that AI readiness cannot be left to a handful of tech giants. The initiative ties corporate training programs directly to federal workforce development goals, creating a public–private framework that did not exist at this scale even two years ago.
The federal side of this effort is coordinated through the government’s AI portal, which serves as a central hub for strategy, research priorities, and workforce resources. For companies like Walmart, which employs roughly 1.6 million people in the U.S., the federal framework provides a structure for scaling internal training programs while aligning them with national benchmarks. The question is whether a 2030 deadline gives the country enough runway when China’s programs are already producing results in primary schools and when U.S. workers must catch up in a compressed timeframe.
Why Early Education Changes the Talent Equation
The distinction the Walmart executive drew between U.S. and Chinese approaches is not just about volume of training. It is about timing. When a country introduces AI tools in early childhood, it normalizes the technology across an entire generation. Students who interact with language models, coding environments, and data analysis tools before middle school develop a comfort level that adult retraining programs struggle to replicate. China’s strategy bets that early exposure will produce a workforce that treats AI as second nature, the way previous generations absorbed spreadsheets or search engines.
The U.S. approach, by contrast, leans heavily on upskilling adults who are already in the labor force. Programs linked to the White House coalition emphasize certifications, short courses, and employer-led training. These are valuable, but they address a different problem. They help existing workers adapt to AI-driven workflows rather than building a generation that grows up inside them. The Walmart executive’s comments highlight this structural mismatch: the U.S. is retrofitting its workforce while China is building one from scratch. Both strategies have merit, but they operate on very different timelines, and the country that starts earlier gains compounding advantages in innovation, productivity, and global market share.
Corporate Stakes in the AI Skills Race
For Walmart, the urgency is practical. The company operates one of the world’s largest supply chains, manages thousands of stores, and serves millions of customers daily. AI already plays a role in inventory management, pricing, customer service, and logistics. As those applications grow more sophisticated, the company needs workers who can operate alongside AI systems, not just follow instructions generated by them. A workforce that lacks AI literacy becomes a bottleneck, slowing adoption and reducing the return on technology investments that run into the billions.
That pressure extends well beyond retail. Every sector from healthcare to manufacturing to financial services faces the same dynamic: AI tools are advancing faster than the average worker’s ability to use them. The White House coalition’s 10 million certification target acknowledges this gap, but the Walmart executive’s comments suggest that certifications alone may not close it. If China produces a generation of workers who grew up with AI tools embedded in their education, U.S. companies will face a talent disadvantage that no amount of corporate training can fully offset. The competitive risk is not hypothetical. It is structural, and it compounds with every year of delayed action.
What Matching China’s Pace Would Actually Require
Matching China’s early AI education push would demand changes that go far beyond corporate pledges. It would require integrating AI literacy into K–12 curricula at the state and district level, training teachers who are themselves unfamiliar with the technology, and funding hardware and software for schools that still struggle with basic broadband access. None of these steps are simple, and the decentralized nature of American education makes national coordination far harder than in China’s top-down system. The Walmart executive’s call to action, while directed at the business community, implicitly challenges policymakers and school administrators to move faster.
There is also a philosophical tension at play. China’s approach raises questions about age-appropriate technology use, data privacy for minors, and the role of government in shaping childhood learning. The U.S. has historically been more cautious about introducing commercial technology platforms into classrooms, and for good reason. But caution has a cost when the competition is not waiting. The most productive path forward likely involves balancing safeguards with urgency: setting clear standards for child safety and data use while still giving students hands-on access to the tools that will define their working lives. For Walmart and its peers, that balance will determine whether today’s five-year-olds become tomorrow’s AI-native employees, or whether American companies must continue racing to catch up with a rival that started the clock years earlier.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
