Target has named Lowe’s executive Chandhu Nair as its first chief AI officer, starting August 24. IBM research puts the share of organisations with a chief AI officer at 76% this year, up from 26% in 2025.

Target has appointed its first chief AI officer. Chandhu Nair joins from Lowe’s on August 24 as senior vice president and chief AI officer. The retailer also named Purvi Shah senior vice president of user experience.

Nair was senior vice president of stores, data, AI and innovation at Lowe’s, and has previously worked at Staples and Gap. He said his focus at Target is a “more coordinated approach” to the technology, covering inventory management and faster decision-making.

“The most meaningful AI stories won’t be about what happens in a lab,” Nair said in a statement. “They’ll be about what happens on the front line, how we make shopping easier for a guest, give a team member a better tool, make a business decision with more confidence or bring a new idea to market faster.”

Target is not early to this. IBM’s Institute for Business Value found that 76% of organisations it surveyed had a chief AI officer in 2026, up from 26% a year earlier, and that those with one reported 5% higher returns on their AI spending. The job is now close to standard, and one of the job titles AI created.

The hire lands while Target is trying to win back shoppers and investors. It has been putting money into generative AI, including a tool called Target Trend Brain that forecasts the styles, colours and materials customers will search for. Last holiday season it launched a conversational feature to help shoppers pick gifts.

Its rivals have moved on similar lines. Walmart has been rolling out AI tools and agents across its stores and supply chains, Gap struck a partnership with Google’s Gemini this year, and Best Buy has arrangements with both OpenAI and Google.

The pressure has reached the top job. Former Walmart chief executive Douglas McMillon told CNBC in December that he handed over to someone “faster” who could use AI to accelerate the business, and John Furner took the role in February.

“About a year ago, I really started feeling like this next run, you could see what agentic commerce was going to look like, the vision for AI shopping, and I started thinking about everything that needs to happen over the next few years, and it really caused me to think that now was the right time,” McMillon said. Stripe’s John Collison has made a similar argument, that agentic commerce will transform shopping.

That shift is further along elsewhere. Alibaba, Meituan and JD.com are already deploying shopping agents at scale in China, replacing the search bar rather than decorating it.

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