Walmart — Power Map

Executive & Decision Authority

Economic Buyer

Not Identified GAP

Leadership above Samarth / Karthik

Viknesh and Samarth need "proof of value for leadership." Budget holder unknown. No exec-to-exec engagement path exists. Must be identified to advance past discovery.

Executive Sponsor

Not Identified GAP

Unknown — implied by "bring to leadership" framing

No visibility into who approves platform investments of this scope. Samarth and Viknesh are evaluators, not decision makers. Surface through next technical session or POV document exchange.

Management & Team Leadership

Champion-Adjacent

Samarth Sharma

CMS Platform Team Lead

Escalating from evaluator to deal shaper. Admitted "false starts" on internal builds — strongest buying signal. Offered to share POV on specific challenges and "all the time you need" for next session. Knows exactly where roadblocks are and where they need help.

Engineering Director

Karthik Cherukuri

Engineering Director, CMS Platform

Joined Session 1 — signals escalating engineering involvement. Disposition unknown. His presence indicates organizational interest beyond product management.

Champions (Actively Pulling)

Primary Champion

Viknesh Salivahanan

Lead PM, Content Platform (San Bruno)

Initiated contact, wants to move fast, looking for proof of value for leadership. Has multi-agent router system but lacks PM-accessible UI, evaluation tooling, and lifecycle orchestration. 2026 workstream to consolidate 20 tools into unified experience. Reacted positively to agent builder UI and instructions system.

Technical Evaluators

Engineering Architect

Suresh Rao

Engineering Architect (Sunnyvale)

Partners with Viknesh on CMS and agent flows. Focused on shared memory architecture, context summarization, and agent-to-agent context passing. Key unanswered question: can external agents access full Opal chat history? Must be resolved before next call.

Optimizely Team

AE (Account Owner)

Rachel Gray

Account Executive

Primary AE. Owns scheduling, SVC coordination, and account relationship. Handoff from Matt.

Overlay

Conor Leary

Opal Specialist

Opal positioning, follow-up email with architecture request, Imran coordination, technical session prep.

Solutions

James Stout

Solutions Engineer

Demoed agent builder, workflows, observability. Owes answer on external agent chat history access (Suresh's question).

SVC

Vimi Kaul

Strategy Value Consulting

Presented Salesforce case study at Session 1. Available for follow-up value consulting if deal progresses.

Engineering (Next)

Imran

Head of Engineering, Opal

Critical for next technical deep dive. Must address shared context/memory, multi-session workflows, observability, and vertical scalability credibly.

Signature Path

Discovery

Viknesh / Samarth

Completed 03-10. Pain validated. Use cases identified. Strong pull signal.

Demo / SVC

Conor / James / Vimi

Completed 03-14. Salesforce case study + Opal demo. Two new engineering stakeholders joined.

Technical Deep Dive

Imran + Walmart Eng

Next step. 90 min session. Shared memory, context, observability, vertical scalability.

Exec Sponsor

Not identified

Must surface through technical validation success. "Proof of value for leadership."

Budget / Procurement

Not identified

No budget discussion yet. Enterprise procurement process unknown.

Signature

Not identified

No visibility into signatory or approval authority.

Informal Influence Network

Viknesh Salivahanan → reports to → Samarth Sharma (or peers closely). Viknesh drives product evaluation; Samarth shapes deal scope and organizational framing. Both need to be aligned for the recommendation to leadership.

Samarth Sharma → reports to → Unknown leadership. Samarth's "false starts" admission and offer to share a POV suggest he has authority to frame the recommendation but not to approve budget. His POV document will reveal the internal decision structure.

Suresh Rao → partners with → Viknesh Salivahanan on CMS and agent flows. Suresh is the technical gatekeeper — his questions on shared memory and context preservation represent the hardest unsolved problems. Technical validation must pass through Suresh.

Karthik Cherukuri → engineering leadership → CMS Platform. His presence at Session 1 broadens the evaluation beyond PM into engineering. Disposition unknown — could become a champion or a gatekeeper depending on technical deep dive outcome.

Writer pilot at Salesforce failed due to lack of agent orchestration. Shared on-call as a contrast point. Validates Opal's differentiation. Useful reference if Writer emerges as competition.

Walmart uses Gemini Enterprise and an existing Optimizely testing platform (smaller business unit). Opal as first commercial tool on Agentspace is a differentiator. Existing Optimizely footprint may create co-term or expansion opportunity.

Map Gaps

Who is the economic buyer?

Viknesh and Samarth are evaluators. "Leadership" needs proof of value but no name, title, or reporting chain identified. Cannot advance past discovery without this.

Ask Samarth: "When you've brought recommendations to leadership before, who makes the funding decision for platform investments like this?"

Who is the executive sponsor?

No exec-to-exec engagement path exists. Proof of value must reach "leadership" but we have no direct line. Deal stalls without an internal sponsor above the evaluation team.

Surface through POV exchange and technical session. If technical validation is positive, ask: "Who would we bring into the conversation to discuss scope and investment?"

Can external agents access full Opal chat history?

Suresh's question from Session 1 — left unanswered. Their architecture requires shared memory where all agents access common context. This is a make-or-break requirement.

James Stout to get definitive answer before the Imran technical deep dive. Non-negotiable.

What is Walmart's procurement / vendor approval process?

Enterprise at this scale will have legal, security, architecture review, and procurement gates. No visibility into any of these processes or timelines.

Too early to push directly. Begin parallel workstream discovery once technical validation is positive.

What is the internal build timeline and status?

Walmart is fine-tuning open-source models and building agentic capabilities internally. Samarth admitted "false starts" but we don't know the full scope, timeline, or investment in the internal build.

Request during POV exchange: "What have you built so far, where are the gaps, and what's the timeline pressure?" Samarth already offered to share this.

Is there budget allocated or being requested?

No budget or ROI discussion has occurred. Purely exploratory. Unknown whether this is a funded initiative or an unfunded exploration that needs to request budget.

Introduce value/ROI framing post-technical validation. Walmart's scale (hundreds of operators, daily content changes) provides strong efficiency story.