Tesco is ramping up its artificial intelligence strategy by appointing the supermarket’s first group customer experience and agentic AI director as the retail industry wrestles with a future in which the technology starts shopping for consumers.
Lucy Cooper has a track record of identifying and delivering innovative growth opportunities, and her expertise spans AI, digital platforms, and M&A, coupled with a strong focus on customer-centric strategies; she takes up the role with immediate effect.
Cooper joins from THG Ingenuity, where she served as chief commercial officer. During her time at the business, Cooper built and launched a suite of AI Agents automating core operations across the commerce stack, from order management to supply chain decisioning, developing the commercial framework for AI governance, cost management and organisational control.
Prior to that, Cooper (pictured) was Microsoft’s head of customer innovation and commercialisation between June 2022 and January 2025. In this role, she led a global team across six locations, embedded inside business customer operations to co-develop and commercialise AI and cloud solutions against real client data and workflows.
Cooper had joined Microsoft from Accenture, where was head of innovation consulting practice across Europe, accountable for delivering products, services and go-to-market playbooks, marketing and brand development. There were over 350 people in practice by the time she left.
With more than 24 million Clubcard households, Tesco has established one of the largest loyalty and reward schemes in UK retail run by DunnHumby, with millions of customers already receiving personalised offers, product recommendations and recipe ideas.
However, through its partnership with Adobe, tapping into its AI and creative technologies, Tesco now aims to accelerate personal engagement and improve the service it offers customers.
Cooper’s appointment follows the launch of the Tesco x Adobe Innovation Lab, a co-innovation model, which brings together the supermarket’s own in-house technology and expertise with Adobe’s AI capabilities.
Adobe engineers are working directly alongside Tesco personalisation and AI teams, bringing together retail customer, technology and AI expertise and customer experience technology for a single, unified mission.
Tesco recently launched a trial of a new AI shopping assistant, built into the Tesco app, as part of its long-term plan to use AI to help make life a little easier for customers.
Launching as a Beta trial with 280,000 Tesco staff, the AI assistant will initially help users with meal planning, providing a two-way dialogue to offer inspiration in the form of personalised recipe ideas which will also account for different dietary preferences.
In a LinkedIn post, Cooper said: “Few businesses have a bigger place in British life, serve more people, or have quite so much opportunity to use technology and data to change how millions of customers shop.
“The most interesting question in commerce right now isn’t how AI helps people shop. It’s what happens when AI starts shopping for them. The weekly shop might be the perfect proving ground… high frequency, habitual and highly personal.
“Full of decisions most of us would happily delegate. Opportunities abound across the rest of the group in Tesco Mobile, banking and health, all underpinned by DunnHumby. I’m thrilled to be taking on remit for the group wide response. I’m excited to get started, meet the team, and work out quite how much I don’t yet know about groceries.”
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