蘑菇AV

The news: Sovos will automate Shopify鈥檚 sales tax returns process for merchants. Our take: Reclaiming time and reducing risk for merchants helps position Shopify as a stronger commerce platform and partner.

The news: Shopify partnered with Coinbase and Stripe so customers can pay with the USDC stablecoin at checkout. Our take: Coinbase is the biggest winner in this partnership. Cryptocurrency needs to gain traction with a wide merchant network to accelerate its use, and Shopify represents a huge score for Base.

layers browse, click, and buy real merch inside their favorite games, ushering in a new era of immersive ecommerce.

Could OpenAI turn ChatGPT into a shopping hub? The company is reportedly partnering with Shopify in an effort similar to other genAI shopping efforts by Perplexity and Microsoft.

The news: Google blamed a faulty, untested policy update鈥攏ot overloaded infrastructure鈥攆or triggering a Google Cloud outage that took down Gmail, Cloudflare, Shopify, and many others. It admitted to skipping standard risk safeguards, per CNBC. Our take: The next outage is a matter of when, not if鈥攁nd the time to prepare is now. CMOs should pressure vendors for transparency, diversify martech stacks to reduce dependency, and ensure business continuity plans cover cloud failures and system disruptions.

Recently, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke asked employees requesting more resources to prove they 鈥渃annot get what they want done using AI,鈥� according to a memo posted to X. The directive reflects a wave of anxiety among workers that AI will eliminate potential jobs鈥攐r their current ones.

Shopify is on an AI acquisition spree: The company鈥檚 latest purchase, Vantage Discovery, will enable it to offer brands genAI-powered search capabilities and improved product discovery.

Its impressive growth gives Shopify a volume and cross-sell boost

The buy button has been on a growth tear since Shopify opened it up to enterprise customers outside of its ecosystem

Prior moves to integrate ecommerce into YouTube鈥檚 platform include its partnership with Shopify, which helps connect creators and brands for marketing campaigns. Key stat: 47.7% of adults worldwide say YouTube is the most useful social media platform for researching brands and products, per ESW in partnership with 蘑菇AV.

Shopify is seeing post-pandemic growth. After slowing to 10.5% YoY growth in 2024, Shopify is rebounding with investments in B2B automation, tax optimization, and AI-powered tools. Sales are expected to grow an average 11.9% YoY from 2024 through 2026, reaching $19.10 billion by 2026. BigCommerce is a solid competitor.

Shopify and Duolingo stated that they are now AI-first companies and will only invest in human workers if there鈥檚 proof that AI can鈥檛 do the job. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which laid off 3,500 employees in sweeping Trump administration cuts, is adding genAI tools to speed up regulatory processes, per BioSpace.

Duolingo will only hire more employees if teams can鈥檛 automate the work needed鈥攁 move also made by Shopify. AI experience will be considered in the hiring process and use of AI at work will be evaluated during performance reviews. One of the most likely areas for contractor cuts is coding.

Block and Shopify started to accept on-chain payments at POS. Early Warning Services and The Clearing House are mulling their own institutional stablecoin. Remittance benefits: Crypto-integrations directly benefit remittance senders through their ability to dodge FX fees and speed up transfers.

Ecommerce companies: Shopify and Etsy. Telecom providers: Verizon and AT&T. Google services: YouTube, Gmail, Drive, and Nest. The details: Cloudflare, whose customers also experienced service issues, blamed Google Cloud for the disruption. The failure crashed everything from APIs to developer tools, underscoring the fragility of today鈥檚 cloud-first digital economy.

Nano-influencers have the highest overall engagement rate (2.53%), and engagement decreases as follower count increases, with mega-influencers averaging .92%, per a HypeAuditor report cited by Shopify. And the higher the engagement rate, the more likely followers are to make a purchase. TikTok is dominated by nano-influencers, representing 87.7% of all influencers on the platform.

Shopify, Wix, and GoDaddy have rolled out POS systems that incorporate hardware, software, and customizable features to enable selling across a range of physical channels.

Our take: Some companies, like Shopify, are already limiting new hires if the job can be done with AI. While those policies will eliminate some jobs, humans will still be needed to oversee AI to ensure it doesn鈥檛 go off the rails, as it鈥檚 wont to do. We expect AI-centric job postings to continue rising as more companies lean into the tech.