Chewy CEO Sumit Singh said the retailer’s new AI assistant, Cai, is already resolving common customer issues like orders, returns, Autoship and account management inside the mobile app, with a companion AI tool called Callie handling appointment confirmations, scheduling and routine follow-ups at select Chewy Vet Care locations.
The numbers Singh shared on the company’s second-quarter earnings call are notably modest for a product getting this much attention. Less than 15% of Chewy’s traffic has been exposed to Cai, which has been live for under a month, and about 30% of chats are being resolved through self-service rather than a handoff. Customers who need a person are, in his words, “seamlessly connected to a care team member within seconds.”
In our reading, Chewy chose to pair that early adoption figure with a projected cost line of low tens of millions in savings in fiscal 2026 scaling to roughly $50 million annually in 2027, against a business that just posted 7.3% year over year sales growth to $3.3 billion in the quarter. That framing treats the assistant as a cost structure change first and a customer experience upgrade second, which is a more honest sequencing than most launch announcements attempt.
For marketing and CX leaders watching from outside pet retail, the useful comparison is the broader convergence of marketing and support into a single AI stack already underway elsewhere. Chewy’s own data, about 30% of chats resolved and 15% exposure after a month, is a more grounded adoption curve than the industry’s usual AI launch messaging, and a useful benchmark against the wider push to make AI visibility a core measured discipline rather than a press release metric.
Source: Chewy second-quarter fiscal 2026 results (SEC filing)
