Walmart is 3D printing the future of big box stores

Walmart once famously hyped its “low price guarantee,” showcasing how the retailer’s scale helped customers save money. Now, in a push to cut its own costs, Walmart is 3D printing its stores. 

For the last two years, contractors working for Walmart have used 3D-printed construction at a handful of sites across the U.S. The walls for five additions to existing stores in Tennessee, Missouri, Alabama, and Arkansas have been completed in this fashion so far. It’s the country’s largest deployment of 3D-printed architecture in the commercial sector. The retailer’s scale is catalyzing the growth and adoption of the technology, which promises to construct buildings faster and more affordably. 

Digital fabrication meets big-box stores

The use of 3D printing for construction has mostly focused on residential structures, owing to their smaller size and the nascent state of the technology. Expanding 3D printing to the commercial sector could help scale up the industry. Meanwhile, completing larger structures with bigger budgets could help prove the utility of the process—and even help bend the cost curve.  

To complete its 3D-printed builds, Walmart partnered with Alquist, the maker of robotic A1X 3D printers, and FMGI, a longtime contractor of the Arkansas-based retail giant. (Walmart declined the opportunity to comment on this story.) 

“This is what keeps me excited,” says Darin Ross, the president and CEO of FMGI, which is based in Woodstock, Georgia. He founded his company in his basement and as it grew into a nationwide firm, he eagerly awaited more innovation. “For 30 years, I’ve watched the construction industry just do it the same way over and over,” he says. “We as an industry are way behind in adopting new technology and new ways of doing things.”

FMGI is trained to operate Alquist’s 3D printers—which pipe layers of a concrete composite, like toothpaste being squeezed from a tube—and recently agreed to expand an existing arrangement with Walmart to 3D print buildings. This includes full-scale buildings and 30-plus projects in the pipeline through 2027. 

The partnership started with a pilot build at Walmart’s Athens, Tennessee, location in September 2024. Alquist printers laid out the walls for an 8,000-square-foot, 20-foot-high expansion of the superstore. The additional area helped the store to better accommodate increased pickup and delivery traffic. At that time, it was the largest 3D-printed commercial structure in the United States.