Quick Look

  • Target has named Chandhu Nair as its first chief artificial intelligence officer and senior vice president, the company announced Tuesday. Nair will join on Aug. 24 after spending more than six years at Lowe's, where he most recently served as senior vice president of stores, data, AI and innovation.
  • The retailer also promoted Purvi Shah to senior vice president of user experience, and in a statement emphasized that close collaboration between AI and user experience technology will help the company "move faster from insight to action, while always keeping people at the center of what we build." The company said via email that both Nair and Shah report to Chief Information and Product Officer Prat Vemana.
  • The executive changes reflect a multi-year transformation strategy launched by CEO Michael Fiddelke in March, aimed at reversing slowing sales. The plan includes $2 billion in additional operating and capital investments in 2026, seeking to reignite growth, modernize the customer experience and strengthen brand positioning.

Deep Dive

Target is bringing AI into the C-suite, signaling the technology's critical importance to its operational strategy.

While the company gave the new role broad responsibilities, asking Nair to "bring greater focus and alignment to enterprise-wide AI," it also identified a specific use case: how AI can enhance the user experience.

This combination allows Target to rewrite the conventional playbook for enterprise AI deployment at a time when the corporate world is still struggling to measure AI return on investment. Rather than pursuing productivity or efficiency gains by adding AI capabilities to applications, the AI and user experience collaboration gives the company's technology strategy a different shape—one that, as Nair said in an interview accompanying the press release, starts from outcomes and focuses on areas where technology can have the greatest impact.

"This requires what I call 'radical collaboration,'" Shah said in the interview. "We need product, technology, data and business teams to sit side by side with user experience teams and the people we serve, learning and creating together from the start."

With Nair's appointment, the company adds a seasoned retail executive who has spent years in roles blending product and technology, with experience accumulated at Lowe's, Staples and Gap.

His recent career trajectory reflects a broader trend: combined product and technology roles are rising through corporate ranks. This trend includes Target's Vemana, who was elevated to chief information and product officer last year.

Bringing product and technology together means companies can move faster and achieve "a tighter alignment between the technology embedded in products and customer needs," Martha Heller, CEO of executive search firm Heller, previously told CIO Dive.

Nair's appointment also comes amid the retailer's transformation, a strategic shift that appears to be showing results. On the fiscal first-quarter 2026 earnings call in May, the company reported net sales up 6.7% year over year to $25.4 billion.

"As AI reshapes retail, its true impact ultimately won't be measured by models, benchmarks, or the sophistication of the technology," Nair said in a post on LinkedIn Tuesday. "It will be measured on the front lines—by how we improve the experience for our guests, how we empower our team members, how we simplify work, and ultimately how we make the entire enterprise smarter, while always keeping people at the center."