Home Depot Puts Ai Tools For Pro Customers Into One Workspace

Home Depot has deployed strategies to expand on its B2B sales through its Pro segment in Q1, including refining artificial intelligence (AI) tools, bolstering partnerships and making another acquisition.

CEO Ed Decker said Home Depot’s objective is to win more Pro business, products and purchase occasions. He claimed that no retailer has the scale or customer reach that Home Depot does to penetrate that segment of customers. Additionally, Decker claimed Home Depot services “most Pro customers in some way or fashion.”

Decker said Home Depot is “looking at something like $400 million of cross-sell run rate” from its primary brand and subsidiaries SRS Distribution and GMS. SRS Distribution acquired Mingledorff’s, a heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) distributor, earlier in May.

Home Depot acquired SRS Distribution in 2024. Then, Home Depot completed its $5.5 billion acquisition of GMS via SRS.

The Home Depot ranks No. 4 in the Top 2000 Database. The database ranks North America’s largest online retailers by their annual ecommerce sales and more. Additionally, Home Depot is the top-ranked retailer in the Top 2000’s Hardware & Home Improvement category.

Home Depot sales growth from Pro customers in Q1

Michael Rowe, executive vice president of Pro at Home Depot, said the state of the Pro business “remains strong overall.” He said Home Depot has been deepening its relationship “with the large Pro working on complex projects.”

Among Home Depot’s key strategic initiatives, Rowe noted, were order management, trade credit and digital advances. Sales among that subset of the Pro segment are showing stronger growth than compared to the overall Pro segment, Rowe said.

“On the digital side of things, that’s paying dividends as well,” Rowe said. “This is another complex Pro, where that gross demand continues to be a powerful engine for us.”

The Pro segment of Home Depot customers who engage digitally has seen a double-digit year-over-year increase. Rowe said that’s “growing faster than the B2C experience” without quantifying the difference.

William Bastek, executive vice president of merchandising, said on Home Depot’s Q1 earnings call that the retailer saw its Pro segment of customers post positive comparable sales and outperform its DIY segment. For Pro customers, Home Depot saw growth in what Bastek called “Pro-heavy categories.” Those included power tools, pipe and fittings, water heaters, fasteners and paint, he said.

Bastek gave an example that Home Depot has “made significant progress with the Pro who paints.” It continues to see share gains with this customer segment, he said.

Bastek said Home Depot’s partnerships with Behr and PPG — both of which are paint suppliers — as well as enhanced digital capabilities and improved job-site delivery capabilities have helped “to remove friction” from their Pro customer experience.

Where Home Depot is using AI to help Pro customers

Ann-Marie Campbell, senior executive vice president, said Home Depot has continued to focus on tools that simplify the day-to-day work of its Pro segment. It has centered that simplification around speed and ease of shopping, whether online, in-store or through job-site delivery, she said.

In previous quarters, Campbell said, Home Depot talked about multiple AI-enabled tools for Pros. Now, it has put all of the AI tools in one workspace that functions as a project-management interface for day-to-day workflows, according to Campbell.

Within that workspace, she said, Home Depot’s Pro customers can access the retailer’s project-planning tool, build a material list, track deliveries in real time and view purchase history. They can also share access with their teams, Campbell said. In addition, she said Home Depot has made it easier for Pros to manage complex deliveries.

“Through complex order scheduling, Pros can provide us with job site preferences and business hours, enabling us to complete their delivery on time inside the exact window the Pro is looking for,” Campbell said. “Our on-time and complete performance has never been better, and our customer satisfaction scores for deliveries — both from store and our supply chain assets — are at record highs.”

Expanding payment options for B2B customers

Rowe said the retailer has piloted a trade credit program as a financing option for Home Depot Pro customers to help them manage large projects and buy materials without paying the full cost immediately. Through the program, Pro customers can delay invoicing until Home Depot delivers the materials.

He added that Home Depot is “very pleased with the trajectory of Pro trade credit so far after gaining some pretty strong traction in 2025.”

Home Depot is seeing growth where it expected to, he said. That is, among single and multifamily builders and with large remodelers. It’s also seeing “strong adoption” in categories with longer lead times, such as windows, doors and appliances.

He said a “major driver” for that is that “Pros absolutely love the fact that it’s 30-day payment terms now on shipment rather than on point of sale, which gives them a distinct competitive advantage around working capital. And as we expand our e-procurement capabilities also with construction management software and integration platforms, we’ll be rolling Pro trade credit out to those channels also within the second quarter.”

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