Woolworths IQ taps accelerator for impactful AI use cases

Woolworths IQ or wiq, the Woolworths and Quantium joint venture, is using a once-a-year bootcamp run with Google Cloud’s Advanced Solutions Lab to get impactful AI and machine learning use cases into production faster.

wiq's Michelle Bauman, far right of picture, at Google Cloud Next '26.

Speaking at Google Cloud Next ‘26 in Las Vegas, wiq general manager Michelle Bauman said the bootcamp is now in its third year, and continues to produce results.

Google Cloud promotes its Advanced Solutions Lab (ASL) as an opportunity for a customer’s technical teams “to collaborate directly with Google AI/ML solution engineers and experts in an immersive multi-week engagement.” It was described onstage as a “premium learning service”.

wiq, which has been running under that name since mid-2022, is a heavy Google Cloud user, and considered to be one of the largest in this region.

Bauman said the first bootcamp in 2024 was run in California as a “very intense immersive environment” for top talent at wiq.

“With the support of the ASL team, we were really looking to deliver high value proof-of-concepts during a two-week period,” Bauman said.

“We saw such phenomenal results that we've made it  … our annual bootcamp.”

The second bootcamp was run in Australia with 25 wiq staff.

“Based on the experience we had in the first round, we said, ‘Here are some top use cases that are coming through, here are the products that we really want to build’, and we spent the time to curate the data, find a business sponsor, [and] make sure that we had SMEs [subject matter experts] in place to answer questions as the team went along,” Bauman said.

“The result was was really phenomenal. We had five - we call them - capstone projects that were delivered through the bootcamp, and they ranged from looking at building agentic workflows for our marketing team, to financial insights and commentary, and another one around looking compliance checks for the food products that we [make] in-house. 

“Four out of the five have been in production now and are reaping the results. So, we're realising benefits from those.”

The latest bootcamp, run in March, had also delivered production-ready AI use cases.

“We've just finished our most recent bootcamp and we delivered four capstone projects from that,” Bauman said.

“Two of those are moving into production this quarter, and then we've got plans to move the other two later into the year. 

“So, we really see [the bootcamp] as a way to accelerate our development cycle and draw on the expertise of the ASL team to help us solve the most complex problems and make sure we're using the newest techniques and the latest tools available to us.”

The bootcamp structure appears designed to solve a challenge faced by many organisations working with AI, around delivering impactful AI use cases that are production-ready and able to achieve value.