Best Buy Is Building Its Future Around Four Pillars. AI Is One of Them.

Jason Bonfig used his first major public platform as Best Buy's incoming CEO to say something specific about where the company is headed with AI, and the two names he dropped were OpenAI and Google.

Speaking on the Q1 FY2027 earnings call on May 28, 2026, Bonfig named both companies as active AI partners in the context of his second strategic priority, expanding Best Buy's reach across platforms, content, and high-value customer touch points.

"We will continue to partner with AI companies like OpenAI and Google to make sure we're showing up in the places where customers look for technology and advice," he said. "These AI partnerships and others to come will enhance our experience. And by participating and showing up on those touch points, we reinforce the trust we built and continue to build with our customers every day."

Bonfig did not describe the partnerships in product terms, he described them in trust terms. Showing up in the places where customers look for technology advice is the same shift that Costco, Gap, and Ralph Lauren all referenced on their earnings calls this season. Agentic and AI-powered discovery becoming the channel that determines whether a brand gets considered at all.

Bonfig outlined four strategic priorities on the call, advancing Best Buy as a retail media, advertising, and technology company; expanding reach; elevating the customer experience; and remaining a human-powered company. AI runs through all four, but his most explicit AI framing came in the experience priority.

"It's about the unique mixture of human, physical, digital and AI and how we amplify it," he said, placing AI alongside human expertise, physical stores, and digital channels as the four structural components of how Best Buy serves customers.

The most operationally concrete AI-adjacent commitment on the call was the Meta Labs expansion. Over the next two quarters, Best Buy will open 900 square-foot Meta Labs in 50 stores, dedicated spaces for Meta's AI glasses and VR products, staffed by employees with specialized training in the Meta ecosystem.

The category context makes the commitment more significant. AI glasses sales doubled year-over-year in Q1, part of a group of emerging categories that Best Buy said collectively doubled versus the prior year. The Meta Labs are a physical infrastructure response to a category that is already growing at scale inside Best Buy's stores.