Overview
- Target announced on Tuesday that Chandhu Nair will join as senior vice president and its first chief AI officer and that Purvi Shah has been promoted to senior vice president of user experience; Nair starts on Aug. 24.
- Target says Nair’s role will coordinate AI work across the company with success measured by concrete outcomes for guests and teams rather than by how much AI is deployed.
- Executives described near-term priorities as using AI to spot changing guest needs sooner, improve inventory management, simplify frontline work and speed better business decisions.
- Nair joins from Lowe’s, where he led stores, data, AI and innovation, and brings prior experience at Staples and retail analytics startups.
- The move follows Target’s earlier investments such as Target Trend Brain and a holiday conversational shopping program and fits a wider retail trend of adding chief AI officers that will test how well firms pair AI capability with UX and operations.