In 2000, Walmart joined hands with a leading Silicon Valley investment firm, Accel Partners, to launch Walmart.com. Accel, by the way, gained much fame (and a gargantuan fortune) as a result of its $12.7 million investment in an early-stage company called Facebook in 2005.16 In about eighteen months, in mid-2001, Walmart acquired the minority stake of Accel to own Walmart.com fully. By 2020, Walmart’s e-commerce sales had climbed to $24 billion and Walmart.com was approaching 10 percent of Walmart’s overall U.S. sales. What had started as a “neutral” strategy in 2000 is now fast becoming the
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