Target Corp. named Chandhu Nair as senior vice president and its first chief AI officer. He comes to Target from home improvement retailer Lowe’s, where he was the company’s senior vice president of stores, data, AI and innovation.
He has also held roles at Staples and Gap.
The retailer also announced Purvi Shah had become the company’s senior vice president of user experience. Shah has been Target’s VP, head of user experience design, research, and accessibility since joining the company in 2022.
“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.”
In his statement, Nair said he’s focused on a “more coordinated approach” to AI for Target, including improving how the retailer manages inventory or enabling faster decisions.
Nair said, “That could mean helping us understand changing guest needs sooner, improving how we manage inventory, simplifying work for our team or enabling faster, better-informed decisions. The measure of success won’t be how much AI we deploy. It will be the difference it makes for Target’s growth, the guest experience and our team’s ability to do their best work.”
Image courtesy Target
