Tractor Supply bets on OpenAI as its primary AI partner
Since the popularization of ChatGPT around 2023, Tractor Supply leadership and employees have been playing around with a number of different artificial intelligence platforms, from OpenAI to Google’s Gemini and Microsoft Copilot.
Tractor Supply has used AI for building customer-facing tools like a chatbot on its website, and for tools that make store employees more efficient, and in areas such as marketing and merchandising. But in early 2025, the company made a decision to build a stronger collaboration with a single AI vendor — OpenAI — rather than using several different platforms. The only exception where the company will use AI technology from others will be in instances where it is embedded in another piece of software, such as software used for replenishment.
That is according to Rob Mills, evp and chief technology, digital and corporate strategy officer for Tractor Supply. He said he wanted to pair up with OpenAI to learn the best ways to implement AI and to create consistencies around governance and its future roadmap. This year, he said OpenAI technology is deployed both with field leadership and staff at its Tennessee headquarters.
“You can tell [OpenAI is] hungry to learn about how companies and retailers, specifically, are using this technology,” Mills said. “OpenAI is here at a different level of collaborating with us [than other vendors] and giving us great insights into the things they’re working on, so we can be ready to take full advantage of it, [and] they’re leaning in on us to learn to make their tool more successful, or just better.”
Mills declined to fully talk about how the technology has been implemented, but said that OpenAI technology has been used to create the AI assistant found on Tractor Supply’s website as well as in its supply chain. The retailer is also beginning to explore AI-driven commerce, according to Mills. OpenAI representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While it is a vendor-client relationship, Mills said there aren’t quarterly reviews or an advisory board. Rather, he said the two companies are constantly in communication on things like product development and new ChatGPT integrations.
Jason Goldberg, chief commerce strategy officer at Publicis, said he has seen other retailers bet on companies like OpenAI, Google or Anthropic for AI partnerships. But he said this tactic is more akin to old-school corporate technology partnerships and believes that it isn’t appropriate for the current rate of change.
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“Here’s the problem with all of these LLMs — the best one changes every week,” Goldberg said. “At any given time, one is better for image generation than the other, and one is better for deep-thinking research, and one is better for writing; and whichever one I say is better, that’s all going to be different in two weeks. … A smart business, and a smart retailer in particular, probably wants access to all of those tools, and they want their employees using the right tool in the right moment. So, these kinds of exclusive all-in things are more of a disadvantage than they’ve ever been before.”
Beyond the chatbot, Mills said other uses of AI at Tractor Supply have included computer vision that looks at customer or team member behavior, such as to notify employees when a certain number of customers are in line. Another use allows employees to ask an app for help in answering customer questions. “It provides good quality and consistent responses to the customer, and when we think about how we ramp up a new team member, it’s much more efficient,” Mills said.
Additionally, Mills said the company has focused on training employees on how to create effective prompts to automate some of their job functions and has created a library of common prompts used throughout the organization.
“If you don’t write those workflows appropriately or have strong prompts, you could potentially get just bad data,” Mills said. “We’re doubling down and really putting a lot of energy around that.”
He said, in judging AI use, the company is focusing more on getting employees to use it than on any metrics. So far, Mills said the company has automated about 1,500 processes using AI. “Ultimately, we want a focus on efficiency and better insights and growth for our business.”