Market Dynamics Report: OneRail's AI Platform Launch with Nvidia

1. 6-Month Narrative Velocity vs. Exposure Friction

2. Theater of Competition Matrix (90-Day Trajectory)

Hi [r/Shopify](https://www.reddit.com/r/Shopify/) \- I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter, which I've published weekly since 2021. I was invited by the Mods of this subreddit to share my weekly e-commerce news recaps (ie: shorter versions of my full editions) to [r/Shopify](https://www.reddit.com/r/Shopify/). Although my news recaps aren't strictly about Shopify (some weeks Shopify is covered more than others), I hope they bring value to your business no matter what platform you're on. Let's dive into this week's top stories... ___ **STAT OF THE WEEK:** Walmart operates more than 1,600+ unique seller names in Google Shopping, each linking back to Walmart-com but registered as a separate seller, according to a Productrise analysis of over 1M product listings. The study notes that Google Merchant Center offers a multi-seller account setup designed to simplify marketplace management, in which individual third-party seller names are not displayed and all products are grouped under the main account's name. However Walmart takes the opposite approach, using individual sub-accounts for each marketplace seller, allowing each seller's name to appear separately in Shopping results, giving it a unique advantage in organic shopping results. ___ **OpenAI** launched a “richer, more visually immersive” shopping experience in ChatGPT that lets users browse products with images, compare options side-by-side with pricing and reviews, and refine results conversationally. The experience is powered by an expansion of its Agentic Commerce Protocol that connects merchant product feeds directly into ChatGPT. Focusing on product discovery is absolutely the right move for OpenAI right now, especially as it looks to grow its advertising business tenfold, as product search and discovery lends itself perfectly to advertising. Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, Lowe's, Best Buy, The Home Depot, and Wayfair have already integrated with ACP for discovery, while Shopify merchants are automatically included through Shopify Catalog with no additional setup required (more on that below). ___ **Shopify** integrated its merchant catalog into ChatGPT, allowing shoppers to discover and purchase products from Shopify stores without leaving the chat. To be clear — this is NOT Instant Checkout, which as you know, OpenAI stepped back from. In fact, I wouldn't even call it “agentic commerce,” although Shopify certainly does. I would define it more as “agentic discovery” with an “embedded checkout experience,” which is great in its own right. In fact, I actually think it's better than Instant Checkout because it allows merchants to have more control over their individual shopping experiences, which is ultimately a win for shoppers too. Alongside the announcement, Shopify made its Agentic plan publicly available, which allows brands not selling on Shopify to add their products to Shopify Catalog and sell across AI channels, which now include ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, AI Mode in Google Search, and the Gemini app. ___ **Meta** announced at Shoptalk 2026 that it will begin testing an AI-driven shopping experience on Facebook and Instagram that surfaces product details, brand information, AI-summarized user reviews, recommended products, and potential discounts in a pop-up after a user clicks an ad. The experience then presents a one-tap checkout built with Stripe and PayPal, with Adyen and Shopify integrations planned. The advertiser is in control of which checkout partner they use. Bloomberg reported earlier this month that Meta was testing a product research experience inside of its chatbot, and it's easy to see how this AI shopping experience could go hand in hand with that. Meta is also expanding its affiliate program for creators, adding Amazon, eBay, and Temu in the U.S., Mercado Libre in Latin America, and Shopee in Asia on Facebook, with Amazon and Shopee affiliates coming to Instagram later this year. ___ **Reddit** launched several new shopping tools to enhance its Dynamic Product Ads experience, which is the catalog-powered advertising solution that it launched one year ago. Updates include Collection Ads, which pair lifestyle hero images with shoppable product thumbnails, Community & Deal Overlays, which are badges that appear on top of product images and display things like "Redditor's Top Pick" or call out discounts, and an alpha Shopify integration, which is designed to simplify product catalog ingestion and pixel installation for merchants. Reddit says that it's seen a 40% YoY increase in the number of high-intent shopping conversations on the platform and that 84% of shoppers feel more secure in their purchases after researching products on the platform — which I can relate to. Nothing inspires more confidence when shopping than a personal product endorsement from “BonerChamp420” and “RonaldDump69”. ___ **Reddit CEO Steve Huffman** also announced that the company will be implementing “human verification” practices and introducing clear labeling for non-human accounts. Huffman made it clear that Reddit doesn't “need or want your identity” and that anonymity is still supported on the platform. They just want to confirm that you're human because “Reddit’s purpose is for people to talk to people.” Moving forward, accounts that use automation in allowed ways (what they call "good bots") will be labeled as "App" so that users know they are interacting with a machine, not a person. ___ **Apple** is introducing paid advertising in **Apple Maps** in the U.S. and Canada this summer, allowing businesses to claim their physical location and appear in ads above organic search results, positioning itself to compete directly with Google Business Listings and local ads. Apple says the ads will maintain the company's existing privacy controls, with user location and ad interaction data staying on-device and not linked to Apple accounts or shared with third parties. ___ **Apple Music** partnered with **Ticketmaster** to integrate live event discovery directly into the app, giving users personalized concert recommendations based on their listening habits through a homepage carousel, dedicated Concerts Tab, Artist Pages, and push notifications for nearby shows. Every event listing now includes a direct link to Ticketmaster for ticket purchases, expanding an existing relationship that already powers event listings across Apple Maps, Spotlight Search, Photos, and Shazam. ___ **TikTok for Business** introduced a new global positioning strategy called “Watch it. Love it. Want it.” to better reflect how businesses are tapping into its platform to build and scale campaigns. Funny enough, OnlyFans could probably adopt an identical slogan, as it works perfectly for both platforms. (RIP Leo Radvinsky.) The announcement notes how the distance between “I saw it” and “I bought it” or “I booked it” is shorter than ever on TikTok because of its integrated ecosystem that can take users from discovery and awareness to interest and action — all without ever leaving the app. ___ Alongside the new positioning, **TikTok** introduced a suite of new ad products designed to help brands tell higher-impact stories, beyond what they could do on television or through standard mobile video ads. Those updates include Logo Takeovers, which allow advertisers to co-brand with TikTok on the logo launch page, Sequential Storytelling Ads, which allow brands to deliver up to three ads to the same user within a designated 15-minute window, Top Reach Format, which allows advertisers to purchase the first ad users see when they open the app, and Pulse Suite UPdates, which align ads with a hand-selected group of creators or with moments when people are already talking about the brand or their product category. Next week's news: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduces new ad format where he'll wear your logo on his shirt and post a picture on Facebook! LOL ___ **Amazon** is testing a new 24/7 delivery service that breaks the day into 10 distinct windows of time spanning 24 hours, according to documents viewed by *Business Insider*. Historically, the company's delivery hours have run from 6am to 10pm. The new system divides the day into overlapping windows, each roughly three hours long, with internal codenames like “Sunrise,” “Coffee,” and “Nightowl.” Maybe they should call the late-night shift “Careful" because this seems like an extremely dangerous value proposition for drivers and a disturbing practice for customers. I personally do not want any delivery vehicles approaching my home during late night or early morning hours, and I can't imagine that I'm alone in feeling that way. However, I could see it working well for dense urban areas and apartment complexes where packages are often delivered to front desks or lockers. ___ **Amazon** is also testing a program that allows shoppers to receive Prime shipping on external merchant websites without logging into an Amazon account. The initiative, codenamed “Confidential Product” in seller invitations, is being piloted by a small group of merchants who use Amazon MCF to fulfill items sold on their websites. Historically, Buy with Prime — the program Amazon launched in 2022 that allows Amazon merchants to sell their products directly from their own websites, while still offering Prime shipping benefits — required customers to login to their Amazon account from the merchant's website, which was a key point of friction for some sellers. Now, Amazon can validate and sync Prime user accounts in the background so that the checkout experience remains completely branded to the merchant. I assume the account validation is based on e-mail address or mailing address, but the *Business Insider* article didn't specify. If I were a merchant invited to participate in this trial, I'd be cautious about what customer information I was sending to Amazon in order to verify their Prime eligibility, and what Amazon is permitted to do with that information. ___ **Shopify** introduced **Tinker**, a free mobile app that consolidates more than 100 AI tools into a single environment where merchants can generate logos, product images, social media videos, and 360-degree product views through conversational prompts. The app brings together models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and other AI providers into a single app, pulling context from a merchant's previous creations to maintain visual and brand continuity, which you wouldn't get when working across disconnected tools. My first thought was — that sounds like a lot of tokens! This could easily become a very expensive app for Shopify to maintain, which makes me wonder if they plan to monetize it in the future. AI companies already subsidize the cost of their premium models for users, including paid users, and now Shopify is taking that a step further by offering the models completely for free. The offer doesn't seem sustainable, and maybe it's not designed to be. ___ **OpenAI** is expanding its advertising pilot to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in the coming weeks, with plans for “many more markets” later this year, according to an update to a February blog post. The company says that early results are “encouraging” and that it's seen “no impact on consumer trust metrics” and “low dismissal rates of ads” so far in its US pilot, which has crossed the $100M annualized revenue mark within six weeks of launch and now counts more than 600 advertisers. Ads are currently limited to Free and Go subscription tiers, with Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans remaining ad-free. ___ **Amazon** is developing large-format stores under a project called Kobe that combine a Walmart-style supercenter with a robotics-powered fulfillment center embedded in the back, with confirmed locations in Illinois and New Jersey, according to internal documents reviewed by *Business Insider*. The concept stores, which will be over 225k sq.ft. and carry over 250k products, rely on AI tools to help determine what each store should carry and are designed to handle in-store shopping, pickup, and delivery from the same building, with more than 100k sq.ft. dedicated to warehouse space, compared to Walmart's traditional 18k to 36k sq.ft. of warehouse in its supercenters. Amazon's plans for a supercenter store outside of Chicago were made public earlier this year, but now internal documents show that the company is advancing additional sites, while referencing longer-term plans to open dozens of stores, or more, if the early pilots are successful. ___ **USPS** proposed adding an 8% surcharge for fuel and other transportation costs to some of its package delivery options from Apr 26 until Jan 17, 2027 to align its costs of transportation with the market and help it cover the additional costs of doing business. The postal service wrote, “Transportation costs have been increasing, and our competitors have reacted with a number of surcharges. We have steadfastly avoided surcharges and this charge is less than one-third of what our competitors charge for fuel alone, so even with this change, the Postal Service continues to offer great value in shipping with some of the lowest rates in the industrialized world.” The proposal is subject to review by the Postal Regulatory Commission and could potentially lead to the adoption of a permanent policy to have its prices reflect market conditions. ___ **Speaking of the rising cost of gas…** **DoorDash** and **Lyft** have each launched temporary fuel relief programs for their gig workers as national average gas prices have climbed more than 30% over the past month to nearly $4 a gallon, as a result of supply disruptions from the US-Israel war with Iran. DoorDash is offering Dashers 10% cash back on gas via its Crimson Visa Debit Card plus weekly fuel relief payments of $5 to $15 based on miles driven, with eligible drivers saving up to $1.90 per gallon through April 26, while Lyft is offering tiered cash back and Upside savings worth between 23 cents and 98 cents per gallon for drivers through May 26. I support the initiatives by both companies, but retroactive relief programs and cash-back tied to debit card usage still require the drivers to front the money for gas, which I'd imagine may be a struggle for many drivers. Both companies are large enough now to strike deals with national gas brands to help fill driver's tanks without them having to come out of pocket. ___ **FedEx** is launching a same-day shipping program with **OneRail**, a last-mile delivery company that covers nearly 99% of the U.S. and handles 80,000 same-day deliveries per day. The offer promises retailers same-day shipping with two-hour and end-of-day delivery windows and real-time tracking, with retailers able to set their own rates. OneRail CEO Bill Catania said, “This is going to be priced extremely competitively. Retailers and brands \[will be\] able to build a highly compelling value proposition to their customers.” ___ **Google** is transforming its Display & Video 360 demand-side platform from a campaign optimization tool into a full AI-powered media buyer, with Gemini now taking on media planning, automated campaign setup, and real-time CTV inventory management, as well as custom reporting through a new Ads Advisor agent embedded in the Google Ads Console. The company also announced a partnership with Kroger to integrate the retailer's first-party shopper data into YouTube and Google's partner inventory, adding SKU-level reporting so brands can directly measure how ads drive Kroger sales. *Adweek* notes that YouTube was the cornerstone of Google's NewFronts pitch this year and is expected to earn nearly 12% of all CTV ad revenues in 2026. ___ **Pubmatic** is also betting that AI agents can successfully plan, execute, and optimize media campaigns through a new partnership with Untapped Growth, a collective representing 20 independent agencies. The company is deploying its AgenticOS platform, built in collaboration with Nvidia, to replace traditional programmatic campaign workflows with specialized AI agents that handle audience discovery, campaign creation, and optimization without requiring buyers to login into multiple platforms or route through a DSP. Pubmatic's director of sales engineering, Harry Tong, said, “The legacy view of a supply chain within programmatic, where there is a buyer who logs into a DSP who connects to an SSP who connects to publishers on the back end—that supply chain is collapsing. SSP, DSP terms are already a bit obsolete.” One agency testing AgenticOS saw an 82% reduction in buy-side costs and close to a 90% reduction in campaign setup time, according to the company. ___ **Amazon customers** can now return unboxed items for free at more than 1,500 FedEx Office locations nationwide through a renewed partnership between the two companies. The new locations bring the total number of U.S. drop-off points to more than 10,000 and gives 80% of Amazon customers a return location within five miles of home, according to the company. 5 miles? That could be like an hour of driving, depending on where you live. The partnership comes as the two companies remain active rivals, with FedEx announcing same-day delivery services earlier this week and Amazon continuing to build out its own delivery network. ___ **Poshmark** rolled out its first major app refresh in 15 years, introducing an algorithmic “For You” discovery feed, a consolidated seller tools dashboard, and a shift from 1:1 square images to 3:4 portrait images, which sparked immediate backlash from sellers who say the new ratio crops their existing images and requires significant work to redo their images across all their listings. Hasn't Poshmark learned by now that you can't just change the image aspect ratio without any warning to sellers?! The 3:4 aspect ratio was previously tested last year and reversed after similar seller outcry, with Poshmark promising in January to give sellers adequate lead time before reintroducing it, which they didn't do. Liz Morton of *Value Added Resource* reports that threads on r/Poshmark and r/BehindTheClosetDoor are filled with sellers threatening to protest the platform by enabling vacation mode or cross-listing their items on competing platforms like Mercari, eBay, and Depop — which they should likely be doing anyway, as no-one should put all their seller eggs in one basket. ___ **Samsung** and **Amazon** are partnering up to bring interactive video and shoppable content to their televisions, providing a full funnel experience for viewers to watch and ad and take action. The integration will let advertisers activate Samsung TV Plus inventory through Amazon DSP, tapping into Amazon's browsing, streaming, and shopping signals, which are brought together via Amazon Marketing Cloud. Brands selling on Amazon can have Add to Cart functionality, while non-Amazon sellers can utilize actions like Send to Phone or Sign Up. ___ **TikTok Shop** sales from brands with at least $30M in annual revenue increased 97% YoY on the platform, according to the company. TikTok also said it logged more than 103B U.S. searches with e-commerce intent in 2025, total transaction volume rose 80% YoY, and that the number of creators earning commissions through TikTok Shop rose 146% YoY, with the company claiming that it has over 16,000 creators generating over six figures in sales. Large retailers and brands have been embracing TikTok more and more in recent months with Ulta Beauty and Sally Beauty recently joining the platform and PepsiCo launching its first product on TikTok. ___ **Shopify** quietly admitted that for years, removing a payment method from Shop Pay has automatically cancelled all active subscriptions tied to that card across every retailer in the Shopify ecosystem, with no warning to merchants, no cancellation intent signal from the customer, and no save flow to recover the subscriber, as spotted by Victor Castro, General Manager of Happy Viking. Merchants who experienced this type of churn had no way to distinguish customers who wanted to cancel from those who simply updated their payment info, and quite possibly could have cost them a lot of money over the years. Shopify neither offered an apology or recognized the issue itself as a problem, and merely e-mailed merchants about the “quick update” to their subscription business practices. ___ **In lawsuits this week…** * The authors suing **Anthropic** for illegally downloading more than 500k copyrighted works to train Claude filed a motion for final approval of a $1.5B settlement, with qualifying plaintiffs set to receive $3,000 per work. If approved the settlement will be the largest copyright payout in history. * **Meta** and **Google** were found negligent by a Los Angeles jury for designing social media platforms harmful to young people, awarding a plaintiff who said she had become addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a minor a collective $6M. The trial was meant to serve as a test case for the thousands of similar lawsuits consolidated in California state courts. * One day earlier, **Meta** was ordered to pay $375M in civil penalties after a jury in New Mexico found the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangered children. * Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown filed a lawsuit against **Kalshi** for allegedly violating the state's Gambling Act and Consumer Protection Act by allowing residents to bet on elections, Supreme Court cases, wars, and other events, seeking to halt the activity and recovery money lost by residents. The lawsuit is the third active legal challenge Kalshi is facing at the state level, following action by Arizona and Nevada. * **Elon Musk** texted **Mark Zuckerberg** last year to ask if he would be open to jointly bidding on OpenAI's intellectual property before making an unsolicited offer for the company in February 2025, according to newly released court documents, to which Zuckerberg responded, “Want to discuss live?” The case relates to Musk's ongoing lawsuit alleging he was deceived into funding OpenAI as a nonprofit focused on humanity's benefit, only to watch it convert to a for-profit company. * **In other Elon Musk lawsuit news…** A San Francisco federal jury found Musk liable for two statements he made on social media in 2022 claiming Twitter's bot problem made the $44B acquisition untenable, which shareholders claim lowered the stock price so Musk could renegotiate or exit the deal. Damages have not yet been calculated, but could total around $2.5B, covering investors who sold Twitter shares between May 13 and October 4, 2022. Musk will of course appeal. * **Epstein victims** filed a class action lawsuit against **Google** and the **Trump administration** for wrongfully disclosing and publishing personal information about them. The suit says that even after the government acknowledged the mistake and withdrew the information, Google continued to republish it, refusing victim's pleas to take it down. Honestly, Google should just admit no wrong doing and settle the case with a healthy payout for each victim. They certainly deserve it, and Google can afford it. ___ **In corporate shakeups this week…** * **Apple** hired Lilian Rincon, who spent nearly a decade at Google overseeing shopping and assistant products, as VP of product marketing for AI, as the company prepares to release an improved version of Siri rebuilt using Alphabet's Gemini AI. * **Apple** is also reportedly offering restricted stock units worth between $200k and $400k to members of its iPhone Product Design team, with the grants vesting over four years, so that they stick around. OpenAI has already hired more than 40 former Apple employees for its hardware projects. * **ShipMonk** hired Hugh Joiner, a former senior executive at Amazon and Chewy, as its new Chief Technology Officer. * **OpenAI** hired Dave Dugan, a former top advertising executive at Meta, as VP of global ad solutions to lead ad sales at the company as it works to strengthen its ties with major advertisers. * **OpenAI** also appointed Kiran Mani, currently CEO of Indian streaming service JioStar and former Google executive, to a newly created managing director role overseeing its Asia-Pacific operations. * **Google's** top India counsel Bijoya Roy resigned after 16 months in the role, marking the latest in a series of senior departures in the country, with the company also still lacking a government relations head after its head of public policy quit last year. * **X** hired Benji Taylor, the founder of self-custody wallet Family, as its new head of design, as the company prepares to launch X Money in April. * **Meta's** long-time content policy chief Monika Bickert, who oversaw the writing and enforcement of Facebook’s content policies, is leaving the company for a job at Harvard Law School. * **TrueLayer** appointed Stefano De Lollis, a former executive at Satispay and Klarna's Sofort Banking division in Italy, as Head of Ecommerce to lead its e-commerce strategy. * **Sam Altman** stepped down from the board of Helion Energy, the fusion startup he has backed since 2015, saying the dual roles became untenable as OpenAI begins exploring a significant partnership with the company, though he will retain a financial interest in Helion. LOL, didn't Altman used to brag about how he owns no equity in OpenAI to avoid conflicts of interest? So instead he uses his position at the company to enrich himself through his other ventures? * Ross Nordeen, the last of **xAI's** original 11 cofounders, has exited the company, following a months-long exodus of other founders. Musk acknowledged the disruption, saying xAI “was not built right first time around” and is now rebuilding, actively recruiting new talent including two senior hires from Cursor. ___ **In hirings and firings this week…** * **X** let go of chief marketing officer Angela Zepeda and more than 20 nontechnical staff in marketing and other departments over the past several weeks, eliminating roles deemed redundant following the company's merger with xAI last year and xAI's subsequent merger with SpaceX in early February. * **Epic Games** is laying off over 1,000 employees, citing a Fortnite engagement downturn that began in 2025 and left the company spending significantly more than it earns. The company also announced plans to cut over $500M in costs, primarily through reductions in contractor spending and marketing. * **Meta** is cutting a few hundred employees across Reality Labs, its social media divisions, recruiting operations, and sales, following a separate round of 1,500 Reality Labs layoffs in January. *Reuters* reported earlier this month that Meta could cut at least 20% of total headcount this year, though a company spokesperson called the report “speculative reporting about theoretical approaches.” * **Solaris**, a German embedded finance platform, is cutting 80 roles, about 20% of its 400-person workforce, as part of a restructuring to transform into an “AI-native bank” where AI agents handle operational processes and humans focus on control and governance. * **Revolut** plans to expand its India global capability center to 5,500 employees by end of 2026, adding 1,600 new roles spanning product development, payment processing, and fraud investigations, as part of a £500M five-year commitment to its India operations. The expansion would bring roughly 40% of Revolut's global workforce to India, where about a third of the company's processes already run ___ **OpenAI** is pulling the plug on its Sora video platform, which it launched last September, discontinuing both the consumer app and developer API and removing video functionality from ChatGPT, as Sam Altman redirects computing resources and talent toward productivity, coding, and agentic tools. The shutdown also effectively kills a $1B Disney deal announced in December, under which OpenAI was set to license more than 200 characters for AI-generated video content, though Disney says it “respects OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business.” I remember when Disney sent Google a cease-and-desist letter for infringing on its IP with its video and photo AI-generation models, around the same time that it struck a deal with OpenAI. It'd be funny if now Disney came back to Google and was like, “Actually we were thinking…” ___ **Google** is rolling out two new tools for Gemini that allow users to import memories and full chat history from other AI apps, letting them carry over personal context such as preferences, relationships, and past conversations rather than rebuilding them from scratch. The memory import feature works by prompting users to copy a generated summary from their current AI app and paste it into Gemini, while the chat history tool accepts a ZIP file upload of prior conversation threads that can then be searched and continued inside Gemini. Google is also renaming its “past chats” feature to “memory” in the coming weeks, demonstrating how important chat history and conversation continuity has become to its AI assistant strategy. I do imagine that interoperability will become the standard amongst AI firms, or at least I'd like to imagine so, as it provides an equal benefit to every company, and is the best move for users. ___ **Amazon** is deploying AI agents to automate work across its sales, business development, and technical specialist teams following layoffs of hundreds of employees between October 2025 and January 2026. The agents include a technical specialist agent that aggregates knowledge across cybersecurity, networking, and other domains, and a partner coordination agent that handles tasks like updating customer records and vetting sales leads. The company says AI was not the primary reason for the cuts, which it attributed to reducing management layers and bureaucracy, but current and former employees say the automation efforts appear directly aimed at backfilling work in groups hit hardest by the reductions. ___ **A federal judge in California** indefinitely blocked the Pentagon's effort to punish **Anthropic** by labeling it a supply chain risk and attempting to sever contracts with the country. US District Judge Rita Lin wrote, “Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government,” making it clear in her ruling that the Trump administration's actions violated Anthropic's First Amendment and due process rights. Big win for American tech companies! Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is currently drafting legislation to prohibit the military from using AI for fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, which started the whole kerfuffle after Anthropic refused to allow such uses of its models. ___ **The European Union** agreed to overhaul its customs system, aiming to coordinate collection of duties and safety checks across countries as it struggles to manage the high volume of low-value e-commerce parcels entering the region each year. Moving forward, online platforms like Shein, Temu, and AliExpress that ship direct from China will be responsible for duties and product safety compliance, with fines for repeat violations ranging from 1% to 6% of the total value of goods imported into the EU in the prior 12 months. The reforms also scrap the existing duty exemption on parcels valued under €150 and replace it with an interim €3 handling fee per product category from July onwards, followed by an additional undisclosed fee from November 1. Last year the EU received 5.8B low-value parcels from China, and a European Commission study found that up to 65% of imported cosmetics and personal protective equipment did not comply with EU safety rules. ___ **Meta** issued stock options to six senior executives that require the company's share price to rise as much as 88% to over $1,100 to unlock the lowest tranche, and as high as $3,727 for the most aggressive tranche, which would push Meta's market cap above $9 trillion. The options cover CFO Susan Li, technology head Andrew Bosworth, product chief Chris Cox, operations boss Javier Olivan, President Dina Powell McCormick, and Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney, but notably does not include CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and must hit their price targets by February 14, 2028 to vest. Good luck with that one! Tesla recently offered similar options to Elon Musk that would pay out around $1 trillion if certain operational targets are hit. ___ **Amazon** paid more than $120M to **Windwave Communications**, a small rural Oregon fiber-optic provider, between 2015 and 2022, while simultaneously negotiating tax breaks and land deals with local public officials who secretly owned the company, ultimately saving Amazon more than $435M in taxes. The officials had purchased Windwave from the nonprofit they ran for $2.6M using projections that assumed just 2% annual revenue growth, while Amazon's payments to the company were already increasing thirtyfold between 2015 and 2021. The Oregon Department of Justice has filed civil charges against five buyers and three Inland board members, alleging the low valuation “was a fabrication,” while Amazon itself has been subpoenaed for documents about what it knew regarding Windwave's ownership, though the company has not been charged and maintains it acted appropriately. I'd imagine investigators would find a very large ball of yarn if they started pulling at threads like this within Amazon, and I certainly hope they do. ___ **The US Army** launched an Unmanned Aircraft Systems Marketplace built with Amazon Web Services that lets Army units, government partners, and allied nations browse, compare, and order vetted drone systems in one place, aiming to combat the Pentagon's notoriously slow and costly traditional procurement process. The storefront is designed to broaden the defense industrial base beyond the handful of giant contractors that currently dominate it and lower barriers for smaller innovators to compete for military contracts — such as Jonah Hill and Miles Teller. The launch comes as drone warfare has fundamentally reshaped the battlefield, with Ukraine producing an estimated 7M drones per year and deploying up to 10,000 per day. *“Thanks for shopping on UAS Marketplace! It's time to review your drone purchase…”* ___ **🏆 This week's most ridiculous story…** Mark Zuckerberg is building an AI agent to help him perform his job as CEO, according to *Wall Street Journal* sources. The plan is for everyone working at Meta to have their own personal AI agent, starting with himself. Could Zuckerberg perhaps build some ethics and morality into his agent? That would help compensate for his current operating system's lack of either. Employees across the company said they have been encouraged to attend AI tutorial meetings several times a week, frequent AI hackathons, and create their own AI tools to speed up their work, with some calling the era at Meta fun and empowering and others saying the rapid change and intense focus on the use of AI has furthered anxiety about potential layoffs. ___ Plus 26 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including **OpenAI** raising an additional $10B, bringing its round total to a record $120B. ___ I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week! PAUL PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

Hi r/ecommerce \- I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Every week for the past 5 years I've posted a summary recap of the week's top stories on this subreddit, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition. Let's dive in to this week's top e-commerce news... ___ **STAT OF THE WEEK:** It would cost each of America's 135 million households roughly $67 per year to subsidize the United States Postal Service's $9 billion annual deficit. This is roughly 10% of what each household pays in taxes to support U.S. military and defense spending. Subsidizing the postal service with taxpayer dollars could help keep the cost of postage lower for the 3.5 million e-commerce businesses and 9 million marketplace sellers that directly depend on USPS for delivery, while continuing to provide stable local jobs for postal service workers. ___ **OpenAI** is scaling back its plans to introduce shopping directly inside the general ChatGPT chatbot, pivoting instead to a focus on having checkouts take place inside of specific apps within its interface. Shoppers will now either need to pay through a retailer's app or be redirected to their website to complete purchase. That's okay, right? I'm sure the 9 people who ever used Instant Checkout for a single purchase will move on. If they had to choose, they'd probably rather have GPT-4 back anyway. The reality of e-commerce in 2026 is that 50% of U.S. sales happen on Amazon and Shopify, as we learned a couple of weeks ago, and checkout on either platform couldn't be any easier or faster for consumers. Instant Checkout was a solution looking for a problem, without the infrastructure in place to actually solve it. ___ **Speaking of AI shopping… Meta** is testing a shopping research feature inside of its AI chatbot, enabling users to search for product recommendations and receive a carousel of product images that include captions with information about the brand, website, and price. Meta also offers a brief explanation of its recommendations as a bullet-list below the carousel. The recommendations are personalized to each shopper, based on the obscene amount of information that Meta has on its users, including their gender and location. For example, when asked to find puffer jackets, Meta AI's response referenced the author's location in New York and offered options for women's puffers. Bloomberg notes that there is no checkout or payment option within the chatbot, but users can click on the product links to view the item on the merchant's website. As we learned from OpenAI's experience with agentic commerce, Meta isn't missing out on anything by not offering it! ___ **Amazon** is exploring technology that would help other apps and websites sell ads within AI chatbots, according to *The Information* sources who spoke to the company about its plans. Sources said that in recent months, Amazon Publisher Services, which is the division of its ad business that helps websites run ad auctions, has held discussions with some websites and outside firms about how it could work with them to power chatbot ads, similar to how it currently serves as a middleman between retailers and publishers via its demand-side platform. Amazon employees pitching the idea have pointed to Pinterest as a potential user of such a technology. Given how expensive it would be to create such an offering in-house, and the expertise required to do so, I can see the appeal of employing Amazon to do the heavy lifting. ___ **OpenAI** partnered with **Criteo** to sell its chatbot ads, according to a public announcement, and is in talks with **The Trade Desk** to do the same, according to sources. *Adweek* reports that Criteo's integration will roll out in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, *The Information* reports that OpenAI has also held early talks with The Trade Desk to sell its ads. No wonder Jeff Green bought $150M worth of company stock! OpenAI says that it plans on eventually building its ad tech functions in-house, putting it more in line with Meta, Google, and Amazon, but I feel like I've been hearing that story for a long time now. Perhaps it's a smarter, safer route to work with existing ad networks to automate sales and provide performance metrics to buyers. It's a faster go-to-market strategy. ___ **Anthropic** is launching a new marketplace for its corporate customers to purchase third-party software applications that use its LLMs, with options initially including services from Snowflake, Harvey, and Replit. Anthropic does not plan on taking a cut of the purchases and will allow its customers to use some of their committed annual spending on its own services toward these third-party tools, which makes sense given that some of the money will eventually flow back to Anthropic via token usage. Despite the company's recent friction with the Pentagon, Anthropic believes that the government restrictions won't affect its business that's unrelated to specific Pentagon contracts. ___ **Google** was issued a patent that describes a system that automatically generates personalized landing pages in place of a brand's own website when its algorithm determines that the existing page is a poor match for the user's search intent. The feature primarily targets e-commerce and paid advertising use cases, with all examples pointing to shopping pages, product feeds, conversion rates, and sponsored content rather than editorial or informational sites. Ah okay, so an AI-generated page that Google can serve more ads on? Sounds about right. Imagine a landing page that displays the specific product's information at the top, followed by a grid of sponsored shopping results for similar products. That's undoubtedly where this is headed. Of course, it would also provide an additional channel for Google to own the transaction through its new Universal Commerce Protocol, effectively turning Google into the world's biggest e-commerce marketplace that merchants never signed up to sell on. ___ **Google** is lowering its Android app store fees in the US, UK, and EU to 20% or less, down from 30%, by June 30th, as well as making other major changes to its app store policies following a jointly proposed settlement with Epic Games this past November. While the settlement is still pending approval by the courts, Google has decided to go ahead with the changes. Additionally, Google is launching a “Registered App Stores” program outside of the US so that users can download and install third-party app stores, like the Epic Games Store, from the web without any headache. Google will not charge developers ongoing fees on purchases made through those stores, only a one-time registration fee of a few hundred dollars. Lastly, app developers will now be able to offer their own billing systems alongside Google Play's billing for in-app purchases, which in practice means that Google is separating its billing fees from its service fees in calculations. ___ **Wait, there's more! And it's not so epic…** As part of the settlement, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, who has historically been one of the most vocal critics of Google's app store practices, has agreed to not only stop criticizing the company's app distribution policies and fees, but to actively advocate that Google and Android are “procompetitive and a model for app store operations.” The term sheet also restricts Sweeney from pushing for further changes to Google's app store policies, requires him to make good faith public statements supportive of the deal, and may obligate him to defend the agreement in courts around the world. The restrictions are tied to Google's timeline for implementing fee changes, which are expected to be complete by September 2027 at the latest, meaning Sweeney may not be free to criticize Google's app store until September 2032. ___ **Apple** entered discussions with **Google** to host an upcoming version of Siri on Google's data center servers with strict privacy standards, potentially moving away from its original plans to host the Gemini models on its own infrastructure. The arrangement would further deepen Apple's reliance on Google, which already provides cloud capacity for iCloud storage and the training of Apple's in-house AI models. Former Apple employees told *The Information* that the company has historically mismanaged its cloud infrastructure and that only 10% of Apple's Private Cloud compute capacity is in use on average, with some servers still sitting in warehouses uninstalled. ___ **Meta** is testing two new retail media tools including “product set optimization” and “product insights” that let brands finally measure whether their ads on Facebook and Instagram are actually driving product sales, according to *Adweek* sources. The first tool lets retail media networks build product catalogs around individual SKUs so Meta's algorithm can optimize ads for specific products rather than just the retailer, solving a longstanding limitation that made it difficult for a Dick's Sporting Goods, for example, to run an effective Nike-specific campaign. The second tool closes the loop on attribution by tying sales back to a specific brand or product rather than just the retailer, giving product manufacturers proof of performance on their ad spend. ___ **Stripe** released a preview of a new feature that enables AI companies to pass through and mark up the cost of LLM token usage to their customers. The tool tracks API prices across models like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, records customer token usage, and applies the markup automatically, giving AI startups more granular control over pricing for high-volume users. Alongside the feature release, Stripe also launched its own AI gateway for accessing multiple models, but the new billing feature still works with popular third-party gateways like Vercel and OpenRouter as well. ___ **Amazon** is shutting down the Wondery podcast network and the $5.99 monthly Wondery+ subscription service, pushing listeners to subscribe to Audible via a discounted plan. Amazon acquired the Wondery podcast network in 2020, which is home to popular podcasts like “How I Built This with Guy Raz,” “New Heights,” and “Armchair Expert.” The Wondery brand will continue to produce its own podcasts, but no longer on its own dedicated app. The shutdown follows a corporate reorganization last year that moved narrative programming to the Audible brand and eliminated 100 jobs. ___ **Walmart** is now permitting sellers to offer free product samples to help boost their reviews via a new option called Recognized Reviewer, which lives inside its Review Accelerator. For products that already have sales, but less than 15 reviews, sellers can incentivize buyers after purchase to increase review rate. For newer SKUs with very few reviews, sellers can provide free samples to trusted Walmart reviewers to leave honest, labeled feedback. In both cases, sellers are responsible for covering the product cost, shipping, and applicable fees, only being charged for reviews that are published.  ___ **Stripe** partnered with **Affirm** and **Klarna** to integrate their BNPL payment options into its Shared Payment Tokens protocol, a tool introduced in October that allows AI agents to make purchases with a shopper's permission and preferred payment method, without exposing sensitive credentials. The integration enables shoppers to see the total cost upfront and select a repayment plan when an AI assistant is helping them browse and buy. The feature is available now for Stripe's direct merchants, with support for merchants that process payments outside of Stripe coming later this year. Stripe also expanded its Shared Payment Tokens to support Mastercard Agent Pay and Visa Intelligent Commerce. ___ **Depop** is increasing its Boosted Listing ad fees from 8% to 12%, effective March 23, and the company is encouraging sellers to take advantage of the lower rates now. The company noted that the increased fee “will only apply to new boosts from that date onwards, so any listings boosted before March 23 will continue to be charged the current 8% fee.” Honestly, not a bad strategy to encourage sellers to boost their listings. Sellers are already blaming eBay for the move, even though it hasn't even finalized its acquisition of Depop yet! However eBay is likely not to blame, as Depop had already announced the same fee increase in the UK in November 2025, so it was just a matter of time before it hit the US market. ___ **eBay** is offering select sellers zero Final Value Fees on up to 25 items that they list in Baby, Fashion, and Home Decor categories between now and the end of March, in a move that Liz Morton of *Value Added Resource* sees as a response to Vinted's recent push into the US market, where the European resale platform charges sellers no fees at all. The invite-only promotion mirrors a playbook eBay ran in the UK before eventually going fully fee-free for private sellers, which some analysts also attribute to Vinted's growing competitive pressure in the region. The promotion is a notable reversal from eBay CEO Jamie Iannone's previous stance that the US market is different from the UK and that the company had no plans to introduce free selling in the States. ___ **More than 83% of ChatGPT product carousel results** are sourced directly from Google Shopping via shopping query fan-outs, compared to just 11% for Bing, according to a recent study by Peec AI researcher Tom Wells published in *Search Engine Land*. The results indicate that brands that rank well in Google Shopping have a significant advantage in appearing in ChatGPT product recommendations as well. The results suggest that ChatGPT's carousel effectively operates as a retrieval pipeline pulling products from roughly the top 40 organic Google Shopping and Bing positions. I think everyone kind of knew that already, but it's interesting to see the data. ___ **Google** will begin enforcing a $5 per day minimum budget for all Demand Gen campaigns starting April 1, aimed at ensuring campaigns generate enough data for its AI to properly optimize during the initial 7 to 14 day “cold start” learning phase. Google said that in most industries, spending less than that amount per day fails to produce enough clicks or conversions to accurately judge whether a campaign works. Advertisers running low-budget tests across many hyper-segmented campaigns will be most affected by the changes. Existing campaigns under the threshold can keep running until any edit is made, at which point Google will require the budget be raised to save changes. ___ **Meta** is updating its ad attribution metrics to more closely align with how other platforms, including Google Analytics, measure performance, including a change to link clicks that will now only count actual clicks through to a website rather than likes, saves, shares, and other engagement actions that have historically inflated the metric. The company is also renaming its “Engaged View” attribution to “Engage-Through Attribution” and shifting non-link click interactions like saves and shares into that category, encouraging advertisers to use this metric to capture the full impact of social interactions. Lastly, Meta is shortening the threshold for what counts as an engaged video view from 10 seconds to 5 seconds, citing data showing that 46% of online purchase conversions from Reels happen within the first 2 seconds of attention on video ads. ___ **Apple** is now blocking iOS users in the United States from downloading ByteDance-owned apps like Douyin, Doubao, and Fanqie Novel, even for Chinese nationals living in the US with a valid Chinese App Store account, according to WIRED. A pop-up window now appears telling users the app is unavailable in their region, with the restriction appearing to apply only to ByteDance-owned apps and not those developed by other Chinese companies. The timing of the block aligns with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which explicitly bars Apple from distributing or updating any app majority-controlled by ByteDance within US borders, though TikTok, CapCut, and Lemon8 remain available under the January divestiture deal. ___ In January, I reported that **Wix** introduced Harmony, a hybrid website builder that combines AI-driven vibe coding with traditional drag-and-drop editing, enabling users to turn natural language prompts into actions, while providing granular, manual control via a traditional visual editor. Well now you can access the Harmony builder directly from ChatGPT via Wix's newly launched app. To begin, users can start a ChatGPT prompt with “@Wix” and the app will automatically surface within the chat to begin the website creation process, which seems wildly unnecessary. Why would anyone want to begin a process on ChatGPT that they'd ultimately have to go to Wix's platform to finish? A modern example of just because you *can* doesn't mean you *should.* ___ **Kroger's newly appointed CEO Greg Foran** said on Thursday's earnings call that the grocery chain's top priorities will be improving its in-store experience and bringing down prices. Foran, who previously served as the CEO of Walmart US, said, “When you combine competitive prices with strong, fresh, and a well-run store, you drive traffic, you grow baskets, and you gain share — that's what I want to accelerate at Kroger. I've spent my career in food retail, and running great stores is how you make that happen.” He also said that in order for Kroger to grow sales more quickly, the company needs to offer customers a compelling reason to shop “by offering great value” — which just so happens to be the name of Walmart's largest private label brand. Looks like you can take the executive out of Walmart, but you can't take the Walmart out of the executive! ___ **Bold Commerce** launched rePete, an AI reorder agent for Shopify stores that predicts when individual customers are running low on a product and sends a personalized nudge to restock with a single click, rather than locking them into a fixed subscription cycle. The tool learns each customer's buying behavior and purchase patterns to generate dynamic reorder predictions and then nudge the shopper to reorder on the communication channel it predicts is most likely to convert. I actually got a sneak peek of the app and it looks very promising. The launch marks Bold Commerce's first new app release in over nine years.  ___ **X** launched a new “Paid Partnership” label that creators can attach to sponsored posts, replacing the platform's previous reliance on #ad hashtags and self-written disclosures. X was the last major platform to not adopt a native paid partnership disclosure tool, with Instagram having added one in 2017 and TikTok in 2022. At the same time, the platform also launched a separate “Made with AI” label,  ___ **In other X news…** the company is promoting itself to potential advertisers with a new deck that emphasizes its commitment to brand safety, according to the leaked deck shared with *Business Insider*. X claims in the deck to have achieved a nearly 100% perfect “brand safe” score using Grok, as measured by IAS and DoubleVerify, and mentions the ways it uses Grok to review posts and users' profiles for brand suitability. The move comes after the platform recently took heat for its AI chatbot sharing deepfake sexualized images of women and children, as X attempts to regain trust with advertisers. ___ **Paramount CEO David Ellison** announced that the company is planning to merge Paramount+ and HBO Max into a unified streaming platform following its acquisition. He also reassured investors that HBO's identify and creative vision would remain unchanged, stating, “Our viewpoint is HBO should stay HBO.” The new combined platform is projected to have over 200M subscribers, which would position it as the number three streaming service behind Netflix, which boasts 301M subscribers, and Amazon Prime Video, which has over 200M subscribers since it's included with Prime membership.  ___ **Amazon** ended its book club program on Sunday to instead “focus on other book discovery features for readers.” Book club admins and members are no longer able to access their clubs or club-related content such as book selections and suggestions. The Book Club feature, which Amazon launched in 2022, had allowed members to use a widget to suggest books to fellow members and to endorse suggestions made by other members. Amazon is instead pushing users to its Goodreads website to engage with other readers. ___ **TikTok** is recruiting US sellers for a new cross-border endeavor called “TikTok Shop US-MX Program” that lets them sell to Mexican customers using their existing US shop credentials, ship directly from US warehouses, and skip the local legal entity and logistics infrastructure that international expansion has historically required. The company is recruiting a select group of sellers for a beta launch running for 9 days later this month. Since launching in the country a year ago, TikTok Shop Mexico has sold over $497M in products, with 128% sales growth between September 2025 and February 2026.  ___ **Amazon**, **Temu**, and **Shein** are reporting significant delivery delays to the Middle East following military strikes on Iran, with the platforms updating their expected delivery windows to as high as 45 days. Freight forwarders have warned e-commerce companies that shipping costs and delivery times could double if disruptions persist in the region. And persist they do! Amazon confirmed that drone strikes hit two data centers in the United Arab Emirates and a third facility in Bahrain, causing structural damage and disrupted power delivery as emergency crews deployed fire suppression systems. The company also closed its fulfillment centers in Abu Dhabi and suspended deliveries across the region. Nvidia closed its Dubai office and transitioned employees to remote work, while WeRide suspended its robotaxi fleet in the city. ___ **In lawsuits this week…** * **Kroger** is being hit with two class action lawsuits alleging that the grocer misclassified its e-commerce manager position as exempt from overtime pay in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act and local wage and hour laws in Colorado and Washington. The lawsuits effectively claim that the role of “e-commerce manager” was just a bullshit name given to product fulfillment roles, titled as such to avoid paying overtime, despite the expectation to work more than 40 hours per week. * **ZhaoCheng Tan** and **Garrett Reid**, investors in Alphabet and Meta, are suing the **Trump administration** for failing to enforce the law that required TikTok to either separate from its Chinese parent company or face a ban in the US. The lawsuit is asking the court to declare that the administration's multiple extensions to forestall the shutdown of TikTok last year were unlawful, as was the deal for new investors to take over TikTok's US operations, as part of its claims that the “illegal” extensions caused a “direct and very real financial harm” to investors of companies that compete with TikTok. * **OpenAI** is being sued by Nippon Life Insurance Co. of America for practicing law without a license. The complaint claims that ChatGPT pushed a woman seeking disability benefits to breach a settlement agreement and file dozens of motions that “serve no legitimate legal or procedural purpose.” OpenAI's usage policies state that people cannot use ChatGPT for legal or medical advice unless a licensed professional is involved, but who the fuck read their terms of service? OpenAI could be found liable for not making that disclosure in their AI generated answers. * **Meta** is being sued for allegedly, but definitely, collecting sensitive content from users with it smart glasses, after nudity and sexual images were viewed by its employees. More on this later. ___ **In corporate shakeups this week…** * **Revolut** appointed former Visa executive Cetin Duransoy as its new CEO for the US and simultaneously applied for a US bank charter. If its applications are approved, the company plans to invest $500M into the US over the next five years, aiming to build a presence in the country that helps it reach its goal of 100M customers globally. * **Alibaba's Qwen AI** division head, Lin Junyang, announced his resignation, becoming the third senior Qwen executive to depart this year. The news was followed by the announced departure of Yu Bowen, who headed post-training for Qwen. * A senior member of **OpenAI's** robotics team, Caitlin Kalinowski, resigned from the company, citing concerns over OpenAI's recent partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense. She wrote, “I resigned from OpenAI. I care deeply about the Robotics team and the work we built together. This wasn't an easy call.” * **TikTok's** global head of business and commercial partnerships, Sofia Hernandez, is leaving the company after six years to take a “deliberate exhale,” according to her LinkedIn post. She wrote, “Choosing to rest is not stepping out of the game. It takes clarity and confidence to step back long enough to recharge your body, reset your thinking, and expand your vision.” * **Beehiiv** hired Darren Chait as its first chief marketing officer to oversee positioning, demand generation, and marketing operations as the company expands beyond its origins as a newsletter publishing tool. Chait formerly served as VP of growth at Calendly, and before that, he co-founded Hugo, a meeting-notes platform. * **Meta** hired the engineers behind the vibe-coding app, Gizmo, which lets people use AI to create and share interactive content like mini-apps or games. The team includes Josh Siegel, Daniel Amitay, Brandon Francis, Rudd Rawcett, and several other ex-Snapchat engineers. ___ **In layoffs this week…** * **Oracle** is planning to cut thousands of jobs and freeze hiring to manage a cash crunch caused by its massive AI data center expansion. The company disclosed a $1.6B restructuring plan in September and expects its free cash flow to turn negative as it builds infrastructure to compete with Amazon and Microsoft. * **Amazon** laid off at least 100 employees in its robotics division responsible for designing warehouse automation systems. The cuts follow the company's recent decision to halt the development of Blue Jay, a multi-arm robotic system designed for smaller spaces. * **Amazon** also fired a warehouse employee who needed surgery to repair two work-related hernias for “non-attendance” while he recuperated at home from the operation. Lashone Brown had been granted official medical leave, but was automatically terminated by Amazon's attendance system five days into his approved two-week recovery period in October. Amazon acknowledged the error, but did not correct it, and now Brown has to sue for damages. * **Flipkart** laid off around 500 employees, roughly 4% of its workforce, following its annual performance review process, which typically results in the company letting go around 1-2% of its employees. The additional layoffs might have to do with the fact that the company is preparing for an IPO later this year. * **Capital One** is letting go of around 1,200 employees at its Chicago offices, bringing its total expected layoffs to almost 1,800 between October 2025 and October 2026. The layoffs, which mostly impact Discover employees, follow Capital One's $35.3B acquisition of the credit card company last year. ___ **OpenAI** began developing an internal code repository alternative to GitHub after recent service outages to the Microsoft owned platform disrupted its software engineers, according to *The Information* sources. Staffers discussed the possibility of selling access to the platform to external customers in conjunction with existing Codex coding agents, though they said the platform likely won't be ready for months if it is to launch. The unreleased project is another example of how OpenAI could directly compete with Microsoft, despite it being one of their biggest and earliest investors and partners. ___ **Kraken** became the first crypto firm to gain direct access to the Federal Reserve core payments system, Fedwire, via its banking arm, Kraken Financial, allowing the platform to move client funds and process payments without relying on traditional banks. The approval, which followed more than five years of regulatory engagement, allows Kraken to settle US dollar transactions on the same rails used by traditional banks, enabling faster and more efficient fiat movement for institutional clients while reducing dependency on correspondent banks. The access is limited in scope, with Kraken not earning interest on reserves or having access to the Fed's emergency lending facilities. ___ **Amazon**, **Claude**, and **TikTok** experienced significant outages last week. Amazon went down for about 5 hours on Thursday, which the company says was a result of code deployment issues. The issue not only impacted Amazon's website and mobile app, but also its pick-up lockers, which customers weren't able to remotely open. **TikTok** experienced an outage in the US that caused content posting lags for creators, caused by an undisclosed issue at an Oracle data center, marking the second major platform failure tied to Oracle infrastructure since the January sale. Lastly, **Anthropic** experienced a widespread service disruption affecting [Claude.ai](http://Claude.ai) and Claude Code, likely driven by an influx of new users after the company shot to the top of the App Store charts following a public dispute with the Trump administration. ___ **Amazon** launched its Amazon Now service in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Tuesday, pledging to delivery groceries and essentials in 15 minutes, with plans to expand to seven other cities this month. The service is free for Prime members and will carry no service fee for an undetermined period, with Amazon partnering with delivery app Rappi to fulfill orders. The move helps position Amazon against MercadoLibre and Shopee in the country. ___ **Amazon India** is expanding its zero referral fee program to cover 125M products under Rs 1,000 ($12 USD), matching similar commission waivers by Flipkart as the two companies aim to better compete with zero-commission platforms like Meesho. In addition to cutting fees, Amazon is also adjusting its logistics costs by reducing Easy Ship fees by over 20% for items priced below Rs 300 ($3.60 USD). The Easy Ship service allows merchants to hold inventory at their own facilities while Amazon manages pickup and delivery. Amazon really wants to win the Indian market! ___ **🏆 This week's most ridiculous story…** An investigation by a Swedish newspaper revealed that Meta is sending videos of people having sex, using the bathroom, undressing, and viewing sensitive financial information to contractors in Kenya, who are viewing the videos as part of their work to train Meta's AI. Contractors told the newspaper that they spent time watching people “going to the toilet, or getting undressed,” often not knowing that they were even recording or being recorded. Good lord, can this company get any worse? Meta defends that it automatically blurs users' faces on collected smart glasses footage, but didn't mention whether it has a policy on blurring vaginas. ___ Plus 22 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including **Avalara** acquiring **Versori**. ___ I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week! PAUL Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

Hi [r/Shopify](https://www.reddit.com/r/Shopify/) \- I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter, which I've published weekly since 2021. I was invited by the Mods of this subreddit to share my weekly e-commerce news recaps (ie: shorter versions of my full editions) to [r/Shopify](https://www.reddit.com/r/Shopify/). Although my news recaps aren't strictly about Shopify (some weeks Shopify is covered more than others), I hope they bring value to your business no matter what platform you're on. Let's dive into this week's top stories... ___ **STAT OF THE WEEK:** It would cost each of America's 135 million households roughly $67 per year to subsidize the United States Postal Service's $9 billion annual deficit. This is roughly 10% of what each household pays in taxes to support U.S. military and defense spending. Subsidizing the postal service with taxpayer dollars could help keep the cost of postage lower for the 3.5 million e-commerce businesses and 9 million marketplace sellers that directly depend on USPS for delivery, while continuing to provide stable local jobs for postal service workers. ___ **OpenAI** is scaling back its plans to introduce shopping directly inside the general ChatGPT chatbot, pivoting instead to a focus on having checkouts take place inside of specific apps within its interface. Shoppers will now either need to pay through a retailer's app or be redirected to their website to complete purchase. That's okay, right? I'm sure the 9 people who ever used Instant Checkout for a single purchase will move on. If they had to choose, they'd probably rather have GPT-4 back anyway. The reality of e-commerce in 2026 is that 50% of U.S. sales happen on Amazon and Shopify, as we learned a couple of weeks ago, and checkout on either platform couldn't be any easier or faster for consumers. Instant Checkout was a solution looking for a problem, without the infrastructure in place to actually solve it. ___ **Speaking of AI shopping… Meta** is testing a shopping research feature inside of its AI chatbot, enabling users to search for product recommendations and receive a carousel of product images that include captions with information about the brand, website, and price. Meta also offers a brief explanation of its recommendations as a bullet-list below the carousel. The recommendations are personalized to each shopper, based on the obscene amount of information that Meta has on its users, including their gender and location. For example, when asked to find puffer jackets, Meta AI's response referenced the author's location in New York and offered options for women's puffers. Bloomberg notes that there is no checkout or payment option within the chatbot, but users can click on the product links to view the item on the merchant's website. As we learned from OpenAI's experience with agentic commerce, Meta isn't missing out on anything by not offering it! ___ **Amazon** is exploring technology that would help other apps and websites sell ads within AI chatbots, according to *The Information* sources who spoke to the company about its plans. Sources said that in recent months, Amazon Publisher Services, which is the division of its ad business that helps websites run ad auctions, has held discussions with some websites and outside firms about how it could work with them to power chatbot ads, similar to how it currently serves as a middleman between retailers and publishers via its demand-side platform. Amazon employees pitching the idea have pointed to Pinterest as a potential user of such a technology. Given how expensive it would be to create such an offering in-house, and the expertise required to do so, I can see the appeal of employing Amazon to do the heavy lifting. ___ **OpenAI** partnered with **Criteo** to sell its chatbot ads, according to a public announcement, and is in talks with **The Trade Desk** to do the same, according to sources. *Adweek* reports that Criteo's integration will roll out in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, *The Information* reports that OpenAI has also held early talks with The Trade Desk to sell its ads. No wonder Jeff Green bought $150M worth of company stock! OpenAI says that it plans on eventually building its ad tech functions in-house, putting it more in line with Meta, Google, and Amazon, but I feel like I've been hearing that story for a long time now. Perhaps it's a smarter, safer route to work with existing ad networks to automate sales and provide performance metrics to buyers. It's a faster go-to-market strategy. ___ **Anthropic** is launching a new marketplace for its corporate customers to purchase third-party software applications that use its LLMs, with options initially including services from Snowflake, Harvey, and Replit. Anthropic does not plan on taking a cut of the purchases and will allow its customers to use some of their committed annual spending on its own services toward these third-party tools, which makes sense given that some of the money will eventually flow back to Anthropic via token usage. Despite the company's recent friction with the Pentagon, Anthropic believes that the government restrictions won't affect its business that's unrelated to specific Pentagon contracts. ___ **Google** was issued a patent that describes a system that automatically generates personalized landing pages in place of a brand's own website when its algorithm determines that the existing page is a poor match for the user's search intent. The feature primarily targets e-commerce and paid advertising use cases, with all examples pointing to shopping pages, product feeds, conversion rates, and sponsored content rather than editorial or informational sites. Ah okay, so an AI-generated page that Google can serve more ads on? Sounds about right. Imagine a landing page that displays the specific product's information at the top, followed by a grid of sponsored shopping results for similar products. That's undoubtedly where this is headed. Of course, it would also provide an additional channel for Google to own the transaction through its new Universal Commerce Protocol, effectively turning Google into the world's biggest e-commerce marketplace that merchants never signed up to sell on. ___ **Google** is lowering its Android app store fees in the US, UK, and EU to 20% or less, down from 30%, by June 30th, as well as making other major changes to its app store policies following a jointly proposed settlement with Epic Games this past November. While the settlement is still pending approval by the courts, Google has decided to go ahead with the changes. Additionally, Google is launching a “Registered App Stores” program outside of the US so that users can download and install third-party app stores, like the Epic Games Store, from the web without any headache. Google will not charge developers ongoing fees on purchases made through those stores, only a one-time registration fee of a few hundred dollars. Lastly, app developers will now be able to offer their own billing systems alongside Google Play's billing for in-app purchases, which in practice means that Google is separating its billing fees from its service fees in calculations. ___ **Wait, there's more! And it's not so epic…** As part of the settlement, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, who has historically been one of the most vocal critics of Google's app store practices, has agreed to not only stop criticizing the company's app distribution policies and fees, but to actively advocate that Google and Android are “procompetitive and a model for app store operations.” The term sheet also restricts Sweeney from pushing for further changes to Google's app store policies, requires him to make good faith public statements supportive of the deal, and may obligate him to defend the agreement in courts around the world. The restrictions are tied to Google's timeline for implementing fee changes, which are expected to be complete by September 2027 at the latest, meaning Sweeney may not be free to criticize Google's app store until September 2032. ___ **Apple** entered discussions with **Google** to host an upcoming version of Siri on Google's data center servers with strict privacy standards, potentially moving away from its original plans to host the Gemini models on its own infrastructure. The arrangement would further deepen Apple's reliance on Google, which already provides cloud capacity for iCloud storage and the training of Apple's in-house AI models. Former Apple employees told *The Information* that the company has historically mismanaged its cloud infrastructure and that only 10% of Apple's Private Cloud compute capacity is in use on average, with some servers still sitting in warehouses uninstalled. ___ **Meta** is testing two new retail media tools including “product set optimization” and “product insights” that let brands finally measure whether their ads on Facebook and Instagram are actually driving product sales, according to *Adweek* sources. The first tool lets retail media networks build product catalogs around individual SKUs so Meta's algorithm can optimize ads for specific products rather than just the retailer, solving a longstanding limitation that made it difficult for a Dick's Sporting Goods, for example, to run an effective Nike-specific campaign. The second tool closes the loop on attribution by tying sales back to a specific brand or product rather than just the retailer, giving product manufacturers proof of performance on their ad spend. ___ **Stripe** released a preview of a new feature that enables AI companies to pass through and mark up the cost of LLM token usage to their customers. The tool tracks API prices across models like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, records customer token usage, and applies the markup automatically, giving AI startups more granular control over pricing for high-volume users. Alongside the feature release, Stripe also launched its own AI gateway for accessing multiple models, but the new billing feature still works with popular third-party gateways like Vercel and OpenRouter as well. ___ **Amazon** is shutting down the Wondery podcast network and the $5.99 monthly Wondery+ subscription service, pushing listeners to subscribe to Audible via a discounted plan. Amazon acquired the Wondery podcast network in 2020, which is home to popular podcasts like “How I Built This with Guy Raz,” “New Heights,” and “Armchair Expert.” The Wondery brand will continue to produce its own podcasts, but no longer on its own dedicated app. The shutdown follows a corporate reorganization last year that moved narrative programming to the Audible brand and eliminated 100 jobs. ___ **Walmart** is now permitting sellers to offer free product samples to help boost their reviews via a new option called Recognized Reviewer, which lives inside its Review Accelerator. For products that already have sales, but less than 15 reviews, sellers can incentivize buyers after purchase to increase review rate. For newer SKUs with very few reviews, sellers can provide free samples to trusted Walmart reviewers to leave honest, labeled feedback. In both cases, sellers are responsible for covering the product cost, shipping, and applicable fees, only being charged for reviews that are published.  ___ **Stripe** partnered with **Affirm** and **Klarna** to integrate their BNPL payment options into its Shared Payment Tokens protocol, a tool introduced in October that allows AI agents to make purchases with a shopper's permission and preferred payment method, without exposing sensitive credentials. The integration enables shoppers to see the total cost upfront and select a repayment plan when an AI assistant is helping them browse and buy. The feature is available now for Stripe's direct merchants, with support for merchants that process payments outside of Stripe coming later this year. Stripe also expanded its Shared Payment Tokens to support Mastercard Agent Pay and Visa Intelligent Commerce. ___ **Depop** is increasing its Boosted Listing ad fees from 8% to 12%, effective March 23, and the company is encouraging sellers to take advantage of the lower rates now. The company noted that the increased fee “will only apply to new boosts from that date onwards, so any listings boosted before March 23 will continue to be charged the current 8% fee.” Honestly, not a bad strategy to encourage sellers to boost their listings. Sellers are already blaming eBay for the move, even though it hasn't even finalized its acquisition of Depop yet! However eBay is likely not to blame, as Depop had already announced the same fee increase in the UK in November 2025, so it was just a matter of time before it hit the US market. ___ **eBay** is offering select sellers zero Final Value Fees on up to 25 items that they list in Baby, Fashion, and Home Decor categories between now and the end of March, in a move that Liz Morton of *Value Added Resource* sees as a response to Vinted's recent push into the US market, where the European resale platform charges sellers no fees at all. The invite-only promotion mirrors a playbook eBay ran in the UK before eventually going fully fee-free for private sellers, which some analysts also attribute to Vinted's growing competitive pressure in the region. The promotion is a notable reversal from eBay CEO Jamie Iannone's previous stance that the US market is different from the UK and that the company had no plans to introduce free selling in the States. ___ **More than 83% of ChatGPT product carousel results** are sourced directly from Google Shopping via shopping query fan-outs, compared to just 11% for Bing, according to a recent study by Peec AI researcher Tom Wells published in *Search Engine Land*. The results indicate that brands that rank well in Google Shopping have a significant advantage in appearing in ChatGPT product recommendations as well. The results suggest that ChatGPT's carousel effectively operates as a retrieval pipeline pulling products from roughly the top 40 organic Google Shopping and Bing positions. I think everyone kind of knew that already, but it's interesting to see the data. ___ **Google** will begin enforcing a $5 per day minimum budget for all Demand Gen campaigns starting April 1, aimed at ensuring campaigns generate enough data for its AI to properly optimize during the initial 7 to 14 day “cold start” learning phase. Google said that in most industries, spending less than that amount per day fails to produce enough clicks or conversions to accurately judge whether a campaign works. Advertisers running low-budget tests across many hyper-segmented campaigns will be most affected by the changes. Existing campaigns under the threshold can keep running until any edit is made, at which point Google will require the budget be raised to save changes. ___ **Meta** is updating its ad attribution metrics to more closely align with how other platforms, including Google Analytics, measure performance, including a change to link clicks that will now only count actual clicks through to a website rather than likes, saves, shares, and other engagement actions that have historically inflated the metric. The company is also renaming its “Engaged View” attribution to “Engage-Through Attribution” and shifting non-link click interactions like saves and shares into that category, encouraging advertisers to use this metric to capture the full impact of social interactions. Lastly, Meta is shortening the threshold for what counts as an engaged video view from 10 seconds to 5 seconds, citing data showing that 46% of online purchase conversions from Reels happen within the first 2 seconds of attention on video ads. ___ **Apple** is now blocking iOS users in the United States from downloading ByteDance-owned apps like Douyin, Doubao, and Fanqie Novel, even for Chinese nationals living in the US with a valid Chinese App Store account, according to WIRED. A pop-up window now appears telling users the app is unavailable in their region, with the restriction appearing to apply only to ByteDance-owned apps and not those developed by other Chinese companies. The timing of the block aligns with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which explicitly bars Apple from distributing or updating any app majority-controlled by ByteDance within US borders, though TikTok, CapCut, and Lemon8 remain available under the January divestiture deal. ___ In January, I reported that **Wix** introduced Harmony, a hybrid website builder that combines AI-driven vibe coding with traditional drag-and-drop editing, enabling users to turn natural language prompts into actions, while providing granular, manual control via a traditional visual editor. Well now you can access the Harmony builder directly from ChatGPT via Wix's newly launched app. To begin, users can start a ChatGPT prompt with “@Wix” and the app will automatically surface within the chat to begin the website creation process, which seems wildly unnecessary. Why would anyone want to begin a process on ChatGPT that they'd ultimately have to go to Wix's platform to finish? A modern example of just because you *can* doesn't mean you *should.* ___ **Kroger's newly appointed CEO Greg Foran** said on Thursday's earnings call that the grocery chain's top priorities will be improving its in-store experience and bringing down prices. Foran, who previously served as the CEO of Walmart US, said, “When you combine competitive prices with strong, fresh, and a well-run store, you drive traffic, you grow baskets, and you gain share — that's what I want to accelerate at Kroger. I've spent my career in food retail, and running great stores is how you make that happen.” He also said that in order for Kroger to grow sales more quickly, the company needs to offer customers a compelling reason to shop “by offering great value” — which just so happens to be the name of Walmart's largest private label brand. Looks like you can take the executive out of Walmart, but you can't take the Walmart out of the executive! ___ **Bold Commerce** launched rePete, an AI reorder agent for Shopify stores that predicts when individual customers are running low on a product and sends a personalized nudge to restock with a single click, rather than locking them into a fixed subscription cycle. The tool learns each customer's buying behavior and purchase patterns to generate dynamic reorder predictions and then nudge the shopper to reorder on the communication channel it predicts is most likely to convert. I actually got a sneak peek of the app and it looks very promising. The launch marks Bold Commerce's first new app release in over nine years.  ___ **X** launched a new “Paid Partnership” label that creators can attach to sponsored posts, replacing the platform's previous reliance on #ad hashtags and self-written disclosures. X was the last major platform to not adopt a native paid partnership disclosure tool, with Instagram having added one in 2017 and TikTok in 2022. At the same time, the platform also launched a separate “Made with AI” label,  ___ **In other X news…** the company is promoting itself to potential advertisers with a new deck that emphasizes its commitment to brand safety, according to the leaked deck shared with *Business Insider*. X claims in the deck to have achieved a nearly 100% perfect “brand safe” score using Grok, as measured by IAS and DoubleVerify, and mentions the ways it uses Grok to review posts and users' profiles for brand suitability. The move comes after the platform recently took heat for its AI chatbot sharing deepfake sexualized images of women and children, as X attempts to regain trust with advertisers. ___ **Paramount CEO David Ellison** announced that the company is planning to merge Paramount+ and HBO Max into a unified streaming platform following its acquisition. He also reassured investors that HBO's identify and creative vision would remain unchanged, stating, “Our viewpoint is HBO should stay HBO.” The new combined platform is projected to have over 200M subscribers, which would position it as the number three streaming service behind Netflix, which boasts 301M subscribers, and Amazon Prime Video, which has over 200M subscribers since it's included with Prime membership.  ___ **Amazon** ended its book club program on Sunday to instead “focus on other book discovery features for readers.” Book club admins and members are no longer able to access their clubs or club-related content such as book selections and suggestions. The Book Club feature, which Amazon launched in 2022, had allowed members to use a widget to suggest books to fellow members and to endorse suggestions made by other members. Amazon is instead pushing users to its Goodreads website to engage with other readers. ___ **TikTok** is recruiting US sellers for a new cross-border endeavor called “TikTok Shop US-MX Program” that lets them sell to Mexican customers using their existing US shop credentials, ship directly from US warehouses, and skip the local legal entity and logistics infrastructure that international expansion has historically required. The company is recruiting a select group of sellers for a beta launch running for 9 days later this month. Since launching in the country a year ago, TikTok Shop Mexico has sold over $497M in products, with 128% sales growth between September 2025 and February 2026.  ___ **Amazon**, **Temu**, and **Shein** are reporting significant delivery delays to the Middle East following military strikes on Iran, with the platforms updating their expected delivery windows to as high as 45 days. Freight forwarders have warned e-commerce companies that shipping costs and delivery times could double if disruptions persist in the region. And persist they do! Amazon confirmed that drone strikes hit two data centers in the United Arab Emirates and a third facility in Bahrain, causing structural damage and disrupted power delivery as emergency crews deployed fire suppression systems. The company also closed its fulfillment centers in Abu Dhabi and suspended deliveries across the region. Nvidia closed its Dubai office and transitioned employees to remote work, while WeRide suspended its robotaxi fleet in the city. ___ **In lawsuits this week…** * **Kroger** is being hit with two class action lawsuits alleging that the grocer misclassified its e-commerce manager position as exempt from overtime pay in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act and local wage and hour laws in Colorado and Washington. The lawsuits effectively claim that the role of “e-commerce manager” was just a bullshit name given to product fulfillment roles, titled as such to avoid paying overtime, despite the expectation to work more than 40 hours per week. * **ZhaoCheng Tan** and **Garrett Reid**, investors in Alphabet and Meta, are suing the **Trump administration** for failing to enforce the law that required TikTok to either separate from its Chinese parent company or face a ban in the US. The lawsuit is asking the court to declare that the administration's multiple extensions to forestall the shutdown of TikTok last year were unlawful, as was the deal for new investors to take over TikTok's US operations, as part of its claims that the “illegal” extensions caused a “direct and very real financial harm” to investors of companies that compete with TikTok. * **OpenAI** is being sued by Nippon Life Insurance Co. of America for practicing law without a license. The complaint claims that ChatGPT pushed a woman seeking disability benefits to breach a settlement agreement and file dozens of motions that “serve no legitimate legal or procedural purpose.” OpenAI's usage policies state that people cannot use ChatGPT for legal or medical advice unless a licensed professional is involved, but who the fuck read their terms of service? OpenAI could be found liable for not making that disclosure in their AI generated answers. * **Meta** is being sued for allegedly, but definitely, collecting sensitive content from users with it smart glasses, after nudity and sexual images were viewed by its employees. More on this later. ___ **In corporate shakeups this week…** * **Revolut** appointed former Visa executive Cetin Duransoy as its new CEO for the US and simultaneously applied for a US bank charter. If its applications are approved, the company plans to invest $500M into the US over the next five years, aiming to build a presence in the country that helps it reach its goal of 100M customers globally. * **Alibaba's Qwen AI** division head, Lin Junyang, announced his resignation, becoming the third senior Qwen executive to depart this year. The news was followed by the announced departure of Yu Bowen, who headed post-training for Qwen. * A senior member of **OpenAI's** robotics team, Caitlin Kalinowski, resigned from the company, citing concerns over OpenAI's recent partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense. She wrote, “I resigned from OpenAI. I care deeply about the Robotics team and the work we built together. This wasn't an easy call.” * **TikTok's** global head of business and commercial partnerships, Sofia Hernandez, is leaving the company after six years to take a “deliberate exhale,” according to her LinkedIn post. She wrote, “Choosing to rest is not stepping out of the game. It takes clarity and confidence to step back long enough to recharge your body, reset your thinking, and expand your vision.” * **Beehiiv** hired Darren Chait as its first chief marketing officer to oversee positioning, demand generation, and marketing operations as the company expands beyond its origins as a newsletter publishing tool. Chait formerly served as VP of growth at Calendly, and before that, he co-founded Hugo, a meeting-notes platform. * **Meta** hired the engineers behind the vibe-coding app, Gizmo, which lets people use AI to create and share interactive content like mini-apps or games. The team includes Josh Siegel, Daniel Amitay, Brandon Francis, Rudd Rawcett, and several other ex-Snapchat engineers. ___ **In layoffs this week…** * **Oracle** is planning to cut thousands of jobs and freeze hiring to manage a cash crunch caused by its massive AI data center expansion. The company disclosed a $1.6B restructuring plan in September and expects its free cash flow to turn negative as it builds infrastructure to compete with Amazon and Microsoft. * **Amazon** laid off at least 100 employees in its robotics division responsible for designing warehouse automation systems. The cuts follow the company's recent decision to halt the development of Blue Jay, a multi-arm robotic system designed for smaller spaces. * **Amazon** also fired a warehouse employee who needed surgery to repair two work-related hernias for “non-attendance” while he recuperated at home from the operation. Lashone Brown had been granted official medical leave, but was automatically terminated by Amazon's attendance system five days into his approved two-week recovery period in October. Amazon acknowledged the error, but did not correct it, and now Brown has to sue for damages. * **Flipkart** laid off around 500 employees, roughly 4% of its workforce, following its annual performance review process, which typically results in the company letting go around 1-2% of its employees. The additional layoffs might have to do with the fact that the company is preparing for an IPO later this year. * **Capital One** is letting go of around 1,200 employees at its Chicago offices, bringing its total expected layoffs to almost 1,800 between October 2025 and October 2026. The layoffs, which mostly impact Discover employees, follow Capital One's $35.3B acquisition of the credit card company last year. ___ **OpenAI** began developing an internal code repository alternative to GitHub after recent service outages to the Microsoft owned platform disrupted its software engineers, according to *The Information* sources. Staffers discussed the possibility of selling access to the platform to external customers in conjunction with existing Codex coding agents, though they said the platform likely won't be ready for months if it is to launch. The unreleased project is another example of how OpenAI could directly compete with Microsoft, despite it being one of their biggest and earliest investors and partners. ___ **Kraken** became the first crypto firm to gain direct access to the Federal Reserve core payments system, Fedwire, via its banking arm, Kraken Financial, allowing the platform to move client funds and process payments without relying on traditional banks. The approval, which followed more than five years of regulatory engagement, allows Kraken to settle US dollar transactions on the same rails used by traditional banks, enabling faster and more efficient fiat movement for institutional clients while reducing dependency on correspondent banks. The access is limited in scope, with Kraken not earning interest on reserves or having access to the Fed's emergency lending facilities. ___ **Amazon**, **Claude**, and **TikTok** experienced significant outages last week. Amazon went down for about 5 hours on Thursday, which the company says was a result of code deployment issues. The issue not only impacted Amazon's website and mobile app, but also its pick-up lockers, which customers weren't able to remotely open. **TikTok** experienced an outage in the US that caused content posting lags for creators, caused by an undisclosed issue at an Oracle data center, marking the second major platform failure tied to Oracle infrastructure since the January sale. Lastly, **Anthropic** experienced a widespread service disruption affecting [Claude.ai](http://Claude.ai) and Claude Code, likely driven by an influx of new users after the company shot to the top of the App Store charts following a public dispute with the Trump administration. ___ **Amazon** launched its Amazon Now service in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Tuesday, pledging to delivery groceries and essentials in 15 minutes, with plans to expand to seven other cities this month. The service is free for Prime members and will carry no service fee for an undetermined period, with Amazon partnering with delivery app Rappi to fulfill orders. The move helps position Amazon against MercadoLibre and Shopee in the country. ___ **Amazon India** is expanding its zero referral fee program to cover 125M products under Rs 1,000 ($12 USD), matching similar commission waivers by Flipkart as the two companies aim to better compete with zero-commission platforms like Meesho. In addition to cutting fees, Amazon is also adjusting its logistics costs by reducing Easy Ship fees by over 20% for items priced below Rs 300 ($3.60 USD). The Easy Ship service allows merchants to hold inventory at their own facilities while Amazon manages pickup and delivery. Amazon really wants to win the Indian market! ___ **🏆 This week's most ridiculous story…** An investigation by a Swedish newspaper revealed that Meta is sending videos of people having sex, using the bathroom, undressing, and viewing sensitive financial information to contractors in Kenya, who are viewing the videos as part of their work to train Meta's AI. Contractors told the newspaper that they spent time watching people “going to the toilet, or getting undressed,” often not knowing that they were even recording or being recorded. Good lord, can this company get any worse? Meta defends that it automatically blurs users' faces on collected smart glasses footage, but didn't mention whether it has a policy on blurring vaginas. ___ Plus 22 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including **Avalara** acquiring **Versori**. ___ I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week! PAUL PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

Hi r/ecommerce \- I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter. Every week for the past 5 years I've posted a summary recap of the week's top stories on this subreddit, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition. Let's dive in to this week's top e-commerce news... ___ **STAT OF THE WEEK:** Walmart operates more than 1,600+ unique seller names in Google Shopping, each linking back to Walmart-com but registered as a separate seller, according to a Productrise analysis of over 1M product listings. The study notes that Google Merchant Center offers a multi-seller account setup designed to simplify marketplace management, in which individual third-party seller names are not displayed and all products are grouped under the main account's name. However Walmart takes the opposite approach, using individual sub-accounts for each marketplace seller, allowing each seller's name to appear separately in Shopping results, giving it a unique advantage in organic shopping results. ___ **OpenAI** launched a “richer, more visually immersive” shopping experience in ChatGPT that lets users browse products with images, compare options side-by-side with pricing and reviews, and refine results conversationally. The experience is powered by an expansion of its Agentic Commerce Protocol that connects merchant product feeds directly into ChatGPT. Focusing on product discovery is absolutely the right move for OpenAI right now, especially as it looks to grow its advertising business tenfold, as product search and discovery lends itself perfectly to advertising. Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, Lowe's, Best Buy, The Home Depot, and Wayfair have already integrated with ACP for discovery, while Shopify merchants are automatically included through Shopify Catalog with no additional setup required (more on that below). ___ **Shopify** integrated its merchant catalog into ChatGPT, allowing shoppers to discover and purchase products from Shopify stores without leaving the chat. To be clear — this is NOT Instant Checkout, which as you know, OpenAI stepped back from. In fact, I wouldn't even call it “agentic commerce,” although Shopify certainly does. I would define it more as “agentic discovery” with an “embedded checkout experience,” which is great in its own right. In fact, I actually think it's better than Instant Checkout because it allows merchants to have more control over their individual shopping experiences, which is ultimately a win for shoppers too. Alongside the announcement, Shopify made its Agentic plan publicly available, which allows brands not selling on Shopify to add their products to Shopify Catalog and sell across AI channels, which now include ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, AI Mode in Google Search, and the Gemini app. ___ **Meta** announced at Shoptalk 2026 that it will begin testing an AI-driven shopping experience on Facebook and Instagram that surfaces product details, brand information, AI-summarized user reviews, recommended products, and potential discounts in a pop-up after a user clicks an ad. The experience then presents a one-tap checkout built with Stripe and PayPal, with Adyen and Shopify integrations planned. The advertiser is in control of which checkout partner they use. Bloomberg reported earlier this month that Meta was testing a product research experience inside of its chatbot, and it's easy to see how this AI shopping experience could go hand in hand with that. Meta is also expanding its affiliate program for creators, adding Amazon, eBay, and Temu in the U.S., Mercado Libre in Latin America, and Shopee in Asia on Facebook, with Amazon and Shopee affiliates coming to Instagram later this year. ___ **Reddit** launched several new shopping tools to enhance its Dynamic Product Ads experience, which is the catalog-powered advertising solution that it launched one year ago. Updates include Collection Ads, which pair lifestyle hero images with shoppable product thumbnails, Community & Deal Overlays, which are badges that appear on top of product images and display things like "Redditor's Top Pick" or call out discounts, and an alpha Shopify integration, which is designed to simplify product catalog ingestion and pixel installation for merchants. Reddit says that it's seen a 40% YoY increase in the number of high-intent shopping conversations on the platform and that 84% of shoppers feel more secure in their purchases after researching products on the platform — which I can relate to. Nothing inspires more confidence when shopping than a personal product endorsement from “BonerChamp420” and “RonaldDump69”. ___ **Reddit CEO Steve Huffman** also announced that the company will be implementing “human verification” practices and introducing clear labeling for non-human accounts. Huffman made it clear that Reddit doesn't “need or want your identity” and that anonymity is still supported on the platform. They just want to confirm that you're human because “Reddit’s purpose is for people to talk to people.” Moving forward, accounts that use automation in allowed ways (what they call "good bots") will be labeled as "App" so that users know they are interacting with a machine, not a person. ___ **Apple** is introducing paid advertising in **Apple Maps** in the U.S. and Canada this summer, allowing businesses to claim their physical location and appear in ads above organic search results, positioning itself to compete directly with Google Business Listings and local ads. Apple says the ads will maintain the company's existing privacy controls, with user location and ad interaction data staying on-device and not linked to Apple accounts or shared with third parties. ___ **Apple Music** partnered with **Ticketmaster** to integrate live event discovery directly into the app, giving users personalized concert recommendations based on their listening habits through a homepage carousel, dedicated Concerts Tab, Artist Pages, and push notifications for nearby shows. Every event listing now includes a direct link to Ticketmaster for ticket purchases, expanding an existing relationship that already powers event listings across Apple Maps, Spotlight Search, Photos, and Shazam. ___ **TikTok for Business** introduced a new global positioning strategy called “Watch it. Love it. Want it.” to better reflect how businesses are tapping into its platform to build and scale campaigns. Funny enough, OnlyFans could probably adopt an identical slogan, as it works perfectly for both platforms. (RIP Leo Radvinsky.) The announcement notes how the distance between “I saw it” and “I bought it” or “I booked it” is shorter than ever on TikTok because of its integrated ecosystem that can take users from discovery and awareness to interest and action — all without ever leaving the app. ___ Alongside the new positioning, **TikTok** introduced a suite of new ad products designed to help brands tell higher-impact stories, beyond what they could do on television or through standard mobile video ads. Those updates include Logo Takeovers, which allow advertisers to co-brand with TikTok on the logo launch page, Sequential Storytelling Ads, which allow brands to deliver up to three ads to the same user within a designated 15-minute window, Top Reach Format, which allows advertisers to purchase the first ad users see when they open the app, and Pulse Suite UPdates, which align ads with a hand-selected group of creators or with moments when people are already talking about the brand or their product category. Next week's news: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduces new ad format where he'll wear your logo on his shirt and post a picture on Facebook! LOL ___ **Amazon** is testing a new 24/7 delivery service that breaks the day into 10 distinct windows of time spanning 24 hours, according to documents viewed by *Business Insider*. Historically, the company's delivery hours have run from 6am to 10pm. The new system divides the day into overlapping windows, each roughly three hours long, with internal codenames like “Sunrise,” “Coffee,” and “Nightowl.” Maybe they should call the late-night shift “Careful" because this seems like an extremely dangerous value proposition for drivers and a disturbing practice for customers. I personally do not want any delivery vehicles approaching my home during late night or early morning hours, and I can't imagine that I'm alone in feeling that way. However, I could see it working well for dense urban areas and apartment complexes where packages are often delivered to front desks or lockers. ___ **Amazon** is also testing a program that allows shoppers to receive Prime shipping on external merchant websites without logging into an Amazon account. The initiative, codenamed “Confidential Product” in seller invitations, is being piloted by a small group of merchants who use Amazon MCF to fulfill items sold on their websites. Historically, Buy with Prime — the program Amazon launched in 2022 that allows Amazon merchants to sell their products directly from their own websites, while still offering Prime shipping benefits — required customers to login to their Amazon account from the merchant's website, which was a key point of friction for some sellers. Now, Amazon can validate and sync Prime user accounts in the background so that the checkout experience remains completely branded to the merchant. I assume the account validation is based on e-mail address or mailing address, but the *Business Insider* article didn't specify. If I were a merchant invited to participate in this trial, I'd be cautious about what customer information I was sending to Amazon in order to verify their Prime eligibility, and what Amazon is permitted to do with that information. ___ **Shopify** introduced **Tinker**, a free mobile app that consolidates more than 100 AI tools into a single environment where merchants can generate logos, product images, social media videos, and 360-degree product views through conversational prompts. The app brings together models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and other AI providers into a single app, pulling context from a merchant's previous creations to maintain visual and brand continuity, which you wouldn't get when working across disconnected tools. My first thought was — that sounds like a lot of tokens! This could easily become a very expensive app for Shopify to maintain, which makes me wonder if they plan to monetize it in the future. AI companies already subsidize the cost of their premium models for users, including paid users, and now Shopify is taking that a step further by offering the models completely for free. The offer doesn't seem sustainable, and maybe it's not designed to be. ___ **OpenAI** is expanding its advertising pilot to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in the coming weeks, with plans for “many more markets” later this year, according to an update to a February blog post. The company says that early results are “encouraging” and that it's seen “no impact on consumer trust metrics” and “low dismissal rates of ads” so far in its US pilot, which has crossed the $100M annualized revenue mark within six weeks of launch and now counts more than 600 advertisers. Ads are currently limited to Free and Go subscription tiers, with Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans remaining ad-free. ___ **Amazon** is developing large-format stores under a project called Kobe that combine a Walmart-style supercenter with a robotics-powered fulfillment center embedded in the back, with confirmed locations in Illinois and New Jersey, according to internal documents reviewed by *Business Insider*. The concept stores, which will be over 225k sq.ft. and carry over 250k products, rely on AI tools to help determine what each store should carry and are designed to handle in-store shopping, pickup, and delivery from the same building, with more than 100k sq.ft. dedicated to warehouse space, compared to Walmart's traditional 18k to 36k sq.ft. of warehouse in its supercenters. Amazon's plans for a supercenter store outside of Chicago were made public earlier this year, but now internal documents show that the company is advancing additional sites, while referencing longer-term plans to open dozens of stores, or more, if the early pilots are successful. ___ **USPS** proposed adding an 8% surcharge for fuel and other transportation costs to some of its package delivery options from Apr 26 until Jan 17, 2027 to align its costs of transportation with the market and help it cover the additional costs of doing business. The postal service wrote, “Transportation costs have been increasing, and our competitors have reacted with a number of surcharges. We have steadfastly avoided surcharges and this charge is less than one-third of what our competitors charge for fuel alone, so even with this change, the Postal Service continues to offer great value in shipping with some of the lowest rates in the industrialized world.” The proposal is subject to review by the Postal Regulatory Commission and could potentially lead to the adoption of a permanent policy to have its prices reflect market conditions. ___ **Speaking of the rising cost of gas…** **DoorDash** and **Lyft** have each launched temporary fuel relief programs for their gig workers as national average gas prices have climbed more than 30% over the past month to nearly $4 a gallon, as a result of supply disruptions from the US-Israel war with Iran. DoorDash is offering Dashers 10% cash back on gas via its Crimson Visa Debit Card plus weekly fuel relief payments of $5 to $15 based on miles driven, with eligible drivers saving up to $1.90 per gallon through April 26, while Lyft is offering tiered cash back and Upside savings worth between 23 cents and 98 cents per gallon for drivers through May 26. I support the initiatives by both companies, but retroactive relief programs and cash-back tied to debit card usage still require the drivers to front the money for gas, which I'd imagine may be a struggle for many drivers. Both companies are large enough now to strike deals with national gas brands to help fill driver's tanks without them having to come out of pocket. ___ **FedEx** is launching a same-day shipping program with **OneRail**, a last-mile delivery company that covers nearly 99% of the U.S. and handles 80,000 same-day deliveries per day. The offer promises retailers same-day shipping with two-hour and end-of-day delivery windows and real-time tracking, with retailers able to set their own rates. OneRail CEO Bill Catania said, “This is going to be priced extremely competitively. Retailers and brands \[will be\] able to build a highly compelling value proposition to their customers.” ___ **Google** is transforming its Display & Video 360 demand-side platform from a campaign optimization tool into a full AI-powered media buyer, with Gemini now taking on media planning, automated campaign setup, and real-time CTV inventory management, as well as custom reporting through a new Ads Advisor agent embedded in the Google Ads Console. The company also announced a partnership with Kroger to integrate the retailer's first-party shopper data into YouTube and Google's partner inventory, adding SKU-level reporting so brands can directly measure how ads drive Kroger sales. *Adweek* notes that YouTube was the cornerstone of Google's NewFronts pitch this year and is expected to earn nearly 12% of all CTV ad revenues in 2026. ___ **Pubmatic** is also betting that AI agents can successfully plan, execute, and optimize media campaigns through a new partnership with Untapped Growth, a collective representing 20 independent agencies. The company is deploying its AgenticOS platform, built in collaboration with Nvidia, to replace traditional programmatic campaign workflows with specialized AI agents that handle audience discovery, campaign creation, and optimization without requiring buyers to login into multiple platforms or route through a DSP. Pubmatic's director of sales engineering, Harry Tong, said, “The legacy view of a supply chain within programmatic, where there is a buyer who logs into a DSP who connects to an SSP who connects to publishers on the back end—that supply chain is collapsing. SSP, DSP terms are already a bit obsolete.” One agency testing AgenticOS saw an 82% reduction in buy-side costs and close to a 90% reduction in campaign setup time, according to the company. ___ **Amazon customers** can now return unboxed items for free at more than 1,500 FedEx Office locations nationwide through a renewed partnership between the two companies. The new locations bring the total number of U.S. drop-off points to more than 10,000 and gives 80% of Amazon customers a return location within five miles of home, according to the company. 5 miles? That could be like an hour of driving, depending on where you live. The partnership comes as the two companies remain active rivals, with FedEx announcing same-day delivery services earlier this week and Amazon continuing to build out its own delivery network. ___ **Poshmark** rolled out its first major app refresh in 15 years, introducing an algorithmic “For You” discovery feed, a consolidated seller tools dashboard, and a shift from 1:1 square images to 3:4 portrait images, which sparked immediate backlash from sellers who say the new ratio crops their existing images and requires significant work to redo their images across all their listings. Hasn't Poshmark learned by now that you can't just change the image aspect ratio without any warning to sellers?! The 3:4 aspect ratio was previously tested last year and reversed after similar seller outcry, with Poshmark promising in January to give sellers adequate lead time before reintroducing it, which they didn't do. Liz Morton of *Value Added Resource* reports that threads on r/Poshmark and r/BehindTheClosetDoor are filled with sellers threatening to protest the platform by enabling vacation mode or cross-listing their items on competing platforms like Mercari, eBay, and Depop — which they should likely be doing anyway, as no-one should put all their seller eggs in one basket. ___ **Samsung** and **Amazon** are partnering up to bring interactive video and shoppable content to their televisions, providing a full funnel experience for viewers to watch and ad and take action. The integration will let advertisers activate Samsung TV Plus inventory through Amazon DSP, tapping into Amazon's browsing, streaming, and shopping signals, which are brought together via Amazon Marketing Cloud. Brands selling on Amazon can have Add to Cart functionality, while non-Amazon sellers can utilize actions like Send to Phone or Sign Up. ___ **TikTok Shop** sales from brands with at least $30M in annual revenue increased 97% YoY on the platform, according to the company. TikTok also said it logged more than 103B U.S. searches with e-commerce intent in 2025, total transaction volume rose 80% YoY, and that the number of creators earning commissions through TikTok Shop rose 146% YoY, with the company claiming that it has over 16,000 creators generating over six figures in sales. Large retailers and brands have been embracing TikTok more and more in recent months with Ulta Beauty and Sally Beauty recently joining the platform and PepsiCo launching its first product on TikTok. ___ **Shopify** quietly admitted that for years, removing a payment method from Shop Pay has automatically cancelled all active subscriptions tied to that card across every retailer in the Shopify ecosystem, with no warning to merchants, no cancellation intent signal from the customer, and no save flow to recover the subscriber, as spotted by Victor Castro, General Manager of Happy Viking. Merchants who experienced this type of churn had no way to distinguish customers who wanted to cancel from those who simply updated their payment info, and quite possibly could have cost them a lot of money over the years. Shopify neither offered an apology or recognized the issue itself as a problem, and merely e-mailed merchants about the “quick update” to their subscription business practices. ___ **In lawsuits this week…** * The authors suing **Anthropic** for illegally downloading more than 500k copyrighted works to train Claude filed a motion for final approval of a $1.5B settlement, with qualifying plaintiffs set to receive $3,000 per work. If approved the settlement will be the largest copyright payout in history. * **Meta** and **Google** were found negligent by a Los Angeles jury for designing social media platforms harmful to young people, awarding a plaintiff who said she had become addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a minor a collective $6M. The trial was meant to serve as a test case for the thousands of similar lawsuits consolidated in California state courts. * One day earlier, **Meta** was ordered to pay $375M in civil penalties after a jury in New Mexico found the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangered children. * Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown filed a lawsuit against **Kalshi** for allegedly violating the state's Gambling Act and Consumer Protection Act by allowing residents to bet on elections, Supreme Court cases, wars, and other events, seeking to halt the activity and recovery money lost by residents. The lawsuit is the third active legal challenge Kalshi is facing at the state level, following action by Arizona and Nevada. * **Elon Musk** texted **Mark Zuckerberg** last year to ask if he would be open to jointly bidding on OpenAI's intellectual property before making an unsolicited offer for the company in February 2025, according to newly released court documents, to which Zuckerberg responded, “Want to discuss live?” The case relates to Musk's ongoing lawsuit alleging he was deceived into funding OpenAI as a nonprofit focused on humanity's benefit, only to watch it convert to a for-profit company. * **In other Elon Musk lawsuit news…** A San Francisco federal jury found Musk liable for two statements he made on social media in 2022 claiming Twitter's bot problem made the $44B acquisition untenable, which shareholders claim lowered the stock price so Musk could renegotiate or exit the deal. Damages have not yet been calculated, but could total around $2.5B, covering investors who sold Twitter shares between May 13 and October 4, 2022. Musk will of course appeal. * **Epstein victims** filed a class action lawsuit against **Google** and the **Trump administration** for wrongfully disclosing and publishing personal information about them. The suit says that even after the government acknowledged the mistake and withdrew the information, Google continued to republish it, refusing victim's pleas to take it down. Honestly, Google should just admit no wrong doing and settle the case with a healthy payout for each victim. They certainly deserve it, and Google can afford it. ___ **In corporate shakeups this week…** * **Apple** hired Lilian Rincon, who spent nearly a decade at Google overseeing shopping and assistant products, as VP of product marketing for AI, as the company prepares to release an improved version of Siri rebuilt using Alphabet's Gemini AI. * **Apple** is also reportedly offering restricted stock units worth between $200k and $400k to members of its iPhone Product Design team, with the grants vesting over four years, so that they stick around. OpenAI has already hired more than 40 former Apple employees for its hardware projects. * **ShipMonk** hired Hugh Joiner, a former senior executive at Amazon and Chewy, as its new Chief Technology Officer. * **OpenAI** hired Dave Dugan, a former top advertising executive at Meta, as VP of global ad solutions to lead ad sales at the company as it works to strengthen its ties with major advertisers. * **OpenAI** also appointed Kiran Mani, currently CEO of Indian streaming service JioStar and former Google executive, to a newly created managing director role overseeing its Asia-Pacific operations. * **Google's** top India counsel Bijoya Roy resigned after 16 months in the role, marking the latest in a series of senior departures in the country, with the company also still lacking a government relations head after its head of public policy quit last year. * **X** hired Benji Taylor, the founder of self-custody wallet Family, as its new head of design, as the company prepares to launch X Money in April. * **Meta's** long-time content policy chief Monika Bickert, who oversaw the writing and enforcement of Facebook’s content policies, is leaving the company for a job at Harvard Law School. * **TrueLayer** appointed Stefano De Lollis, a former executive at Satispay and Klarna's Sofort Banking division in Italy, as Head of Ecommerce to lead its e-commerce strategy. * **Sam Altman** stepped down from the board of Helion Energy, the fusion startup he has backed since 2015, saying the dual roles became untenable as OpenAI begins exploring a significant partnership with the company, though he will retain a financial interest in Helion. LOL, didn't Altman used to brag about how he owns no equity in OpenAI to avoid conflicts of interest? So instead he uses his position at the company to enrich himself through his other ventures? * Ross Nordeen, the last of **xAI's** original 11 cofounders, has exited the company, following a months-long exodus of other founders. Musk acknowledged the disruption, saying xAI “was not built right first time around” and is now rebuilding, actively recruiting new talent including two senior hires from Cursor. ___ **In hirings and firings this week…** * **X** let go of chief marketing officer Angela Zepeda and more than 20 nontechnical staff in marketing and other departments over the past several weeks, eliminating roles deemed redundant following the company's merger with xAI last year and xAI's subsequent merger with SpaceX in early February. * **Epic Games** is laying off over 1,000 employees, citing a Fortnite engagement downturn that began in 2025 and left the company spending significantly more than it earns. The company also announced plans to cut over $500M in costs, primarily through reductions in contractor spending and marketing. * **Meta** is cutting a few hundred employees across Reality Labs, its social media divisions, recruiting operations, and sales, following a separate round of 1,500 Reality Labs layoffs in January. *Reuters* reported earlier this month that Meta could cut at least 20% of total headcount this year, though a company spokesperson called the report “speculative reporting about theoretical approaches.” * **Solaris**, a German embedded finance platform, is cutting 80 roles, about 20% of its 400-person workforce, as part of a restructuring to transform into an “AI-native bank” where AI agents handle operational processes and humans focus on control and governance. * **Revolut** plans to expand its India global capability center to 5,500 employees by end of 2026, adding 1,600 new roles spanning product development, payment processing, and fraud investigations, as part of a £500M five-year commitment to its India operations. The expansion would bring roughly 40% of Revolut's global workforce to India, where about a third of the company's processes already run ___ **OpenAI** is pulling the plug on its Sora video platform, which it launched last September, discontinuing both the consumer app and developer API and removing video functionality from ChatGPT, as Sam Altman redirects computing resources and talent toward productivity, coding, and agentic tools. The shutdown also effectively kills a $1B Disney deal announced in December, under which OpenAI was set to license more than 200 characters for AI-generated video content, though Disney says it “respects OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business.” I remember when Disney sent Google a cease-and-desist letter for infringing on its IP with its video and photo AI-generation models, around the same time that it struck a deal with OpenAI. It'd be funny if now Disney came back to Google and was like, “Actually we were thinking…” ___ **Google** is rolling out two new tools for Gemini that allow users to import memories and full chat history from other AI apps, letting them carry over personal context such as preferences, relationships, and past conversations rather than rebuilding them from scratch. The memory import feature works by prompting users to copy a generated summary from their current AI app and paste it into Gemini, while the chat history tool accepts a ZIP file upload of prior conversation threads that can then be searched and continued inside Gemini. Google is also renaming its “past chats” feature to “memory” in the coming weeks, demonstrating how important chat history and conversation continuity has become to its AI assistant strategy. I do imagine that interoperability will become the standard amongst AI firms, or at least I'd like to imagine so, as it provides an equal benefit to every company, and is the best move for users. ___ **Amazon** is deploying AI agents to automate work across its sales, business development, and technical specialist teams following layoffs of hundreds of employees between October 2025 and January 2026. The agents include a technical specialist agent that aggregates knowledge across cybersecurity, networking, and other domains, and a partner coordination agent that handles tasks like updating customer records and vetting sales leads. The company says AI was not the primary reason for the cuts, which it attributed to reducing management layers and bureaucracy, but current and former employees say the automation efforts appear directly aimed at backfilling work in groups hit hardest by the reductions. ___ **A federal judge in California** indefinitely blocked the Pentagon's effort to punish **Anthropic** by labeling it a supply chain risk and attempting to sever contracts with the country. US District Judge Rita Lin wrote, “Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government,” making it clear in her ruling that the Trump administration's actions violated Anthropic's First Amendment and due process rights. Big win for American tech companies! Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is currently drafting legislation to prohibit the military from using AI for fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, which started the whole kerfuffle after Anthropic refused to allow such uses of its models. ___ **The European Union** agreed to overhaul its customs system, aiming to coordinate collection of duties and safety checks across countries as it struggles to manage the high volume of low-value e-commerce parcels entering the region each year. Moving forward, online platforms like Shein, Temu, and AliExpress that ship direct from China will be responsible for duties and product safety compliance, with fines for repeat violations ranging from 1% to 6% of the total value of goods imported into the EU in the prior 12 months. The reforms also scrap the existing duty exemption on parcels valued under €150 and replace it with an interim €3 handling fee per product category from July onwards, followed by an additional undisclosed fee from November 1. Last year the EU received 5.8B low-value parcels from China, and a European Commission study found that up to 65% of imported cosmetics and personal protective equipment did not comply with EU safety rules. ___ **Meta** issued stock options to six senior executives that require the company's share price to rise as much as 88% to over $1,100 to unlock the lowest tranche, and as high as $3,727 for the most aggressive tranche, which would push Meta's market cap above $9 trillion. The options cover CFO Susan Li, technology head Andrew Bosworth, product chief Chris Cox, operations boss Javier Olivan, President Dina Powell McCormick, and Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney, but notably does not include CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and must hit their price targets by February 14, 2028 to vest. Good luck with that one! Tesla recently offered similar options to Elon Musk that would pay out around $1 trillion if certain operational targets are hit. ___ **Amazon** paid more than $120M to **Windwave Communications**, a small rural Oregon fiber-optic provider, between 2015 and 2022, while simultaneously negotiating tax breaks and land deals with local public officials who secretly owned the company, ultimately saving Amazon more than $435M in taxes. The officials had purchased Windwave from the nonprofit they ran for $2.6M using projections that assumed just 2% annual revenue growth, while Amazon's payments to the company were already increasing thirtyfold between 2015 and 2021. The Oregon Department of Justice has filed civil charges against five buyers and three Inland board members, alleging the low valuation “was a fabrication,” while Amazon itself has been subpoenaed for documents about what it knew regarding Windwave's ownership, though the company has not been charged and maintains it acted appropriately. I'd imagine investigators would find a very large ball of yarn if they started pulling at threads like this within Amazon, and I certainly hope they do. ___ **The US Army** launched an Unmanned Aircraft Systems Marketplace built with Amazon Web Services that lets Army units, government partners, and allied nations browse, compare, and order vetted drone systems in one place, aiming to combat the Pentagon's notoriously slow and costly traditional procurement process. The storefront is designed to broaden the defense industrial base beyond the handful of giant contractors that currently dominate it and lower barriers for smaller innovators to compete for military contracts — such as Jonah Hill and Miles Teller. The launch comes as drone warfare has fundamentally reshaped the battlefield, with Ukraine producing an estimated 7M drones per year and deploying up to 10,000 per day. *“Thanks for shopping on UAS Marketplace! It's time to review your drone purchase…”* ___ **🏆 This week's most ridiculous story…** Mark Zuckerberg is building an AI agent to help him perform his job as CEO, according to *Wall Street Journal* sources. The plan is for everyone working at Meta to have their own personal AI agent, starting with himself. Could Zuckerberg perhaps build some ethics and morality into his agent? That would help compensate for his current operating system's lack of either. Employees across the company said they have been encouraged to attend AI tutorial meetings several times a week, frequent AI hackathons, and create their own AI tools to speed up their work, with some calling the era at Meta fun and empowering and others saying the rapid change and intense focus on the use of AI has furthered anxiety about potential layoffs. ___ Plus 26 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including **OpenAI** raising an additional $10B, bringing its round total to a record $120B. ___ I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week! PAUL Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

https://preview.redd.it/dc28xxdus70h1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0e760f893bfacec6c834f1b9fc3293a94cf33608 https://preview.redd.it/4qurucdus70h1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c784a635d791c9122c5f436d074aaf61fd467b57 [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!b4fq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa56d5eb6-0517-414f-8c39-30b62518230a_3000x3000.jpeg) 🎧 **Listen Ads-Free:** Subscribe to DjamgaMind at [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/djamgamind/id6760446113](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/djamgamind/id6760446113) \#DJAMGAMIND **Summary:** In this weekly briefing, we analyze the “Automation Squeeze.” We deconstruct the massive wave of white-collar layoffs as Cloudflare and Coinbase cut up to 20% of their staff to implement “agentic AI-first” operations. We explore the fracturing hardware supply chain, highlighted by Apple’s preliminary chip deal with Intel and a collapse in global motherboard sales due to soaring RAM prices. We also dive into the courtroom drama of Mira Murati testifying against Sam Altman, the surprising compute truce between Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Anthropic, OpenAI’s push to build 30 million AI smartphones by 2027, and a landmark Harvard study proving AI can outperform ER doctors in diagnostic triage. **Important Topics:** * **The Agentic Labor Purge:** Cloudflare cuts 1,100 jobs (20%) and Coinbase cuts 700 jobs (14%), explicitly citing the shift to AI-driven productivity and flattened org charts. * **Apple & Intel Chip Deal:** Apple signs a preliminary agreement with Intel for US-based chip manufacturing to hedge against TSMC capacity limits. * **Motherboard Market Collapse:** Asus, Asrock, and MSI slash 2026 projections by 30% as the AI data center buildout causes a severe DDR5 memory shortage (”RAMageddon”). * **Murati Testifies Against Altman:** Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati testifies in federal court that Sam Altman lied about safety clearances and pitted executives against each other. * **OpenAI Fast-Tracks Smartphone:** OpenAI partners with MediaTek to begin mass-producing an “AI agent phone” in early 2027, targeting 30 million units. * **Musk & Anthropic Truce:** SpaceX(AI) signs a massive deal to lease the Colossus 1 supercluster to Anthropic, doubling Claude’s usage limits. * **AI Beats ER Doctors:** A Harvard study shows OpenAI’s o1 model diagnosing 76 real ER cases more accurately than two attending physicians using unstructured notes. * **Enterprise Finance Push:** Anthropic ($1.5B joint venture) and OpenAI ($4B deployment company) launch massive consulting arms to force AI into Wall Street and mid-sized businesses. * **DeepMind UK Unionizes:** Google DeepMind workers in London vote to unionize to block the lab from supplying military AI to the US and Israel. * **Amazon Attacks UPS:** Amazon launches “Supply Chain Services,” opening its 100-plane, 80,000-trailer network to B2B shipping. **🔗 RESOURCES** The AI landscape moves faster than a hallucinating LLM on a double espresso, which is why I’ve done the heavy lifting for you. Stop scrolling through generic “Top 10” lists and head over to the **AI Executive Toolkit** at [https://djamgamind.com/toolkit](https://djamgamind.com/toolkit) * **Find REMOTE AI Jobs (Mercor):** Apply [Here](https://work.mercor.com/?referralCode=82d5f4e3-e1a3-4064-963f-c197bb2c8db1) * **Google Workspace:** Professionalize your firm’s infrastructure with secure, cloud-based collaboration and branded communication: [*https://referworkspace.app.goo.gl/Q371*](https://referworkspace.app.goo.gl/Q371) * **AI Learning App Recommendation:** [https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/ai-ml-tutor-pro/id1610947211](https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/ai-ml-tutor-pro/id1610947211) [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Jl8z!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc7c1c5f6-e62a-41b4-9676-f8d557606e60_3000x3000.jpeg) ⚗️ **PRODUCTION NOTE**: **We Practice What We Preach.** *AI Unraveled* is produced using a hybrid **“Human-in-the-Loop”** workflow. # Apple and Intel reach preliminary chip deal * Apple has signed a preliminary agreement with Intel to manufacture some of the chips that go into Apple devices, according to The Wall Street Journal, ending more than a year of intensive talks between the two companies. * It’s not yet clear which Apple products Intel will make chips for, but earlier reports from Ming-Chi Kuo and Jeff Pu suggested M-class chips for Macs and iPads in 2027, with iPhone chips possibly following in 2028. * The US government played a key role in the deal, with President Trump personally advocating for Intel to Tim Cook at the White House, which fits the administration’s push to secure new business for the partly US-owned chipmaker. # Google adds more website links to AI Overviews * Google is rolling out changes to AI Overviews and AI Mode that add more links to outside websites, including a new “Further Exploration” section at the bottom of answers that suggests related articles in a bullet point list. * The “Further Exploration” box may also surface follow-up bait questions, and in the example Google shared, a search about urban green spaces points users to content covering specific projects in New York and Singapore. * A separate “Expert Advice” section will pull snippets from news stories, reviews, public forums, and social media posts tied to the query, with each entry linking out so readers can jump to the full conversation. # Sales of motherboards are collapsing * Skyrocketing RAM prices tied to AI data center demand are dragging down motherboard sales, with Taiwan’s four biggest makers — Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte, and MSI — sharply cutting their 2026 shipment projections by roughly 25 to 30 percent. * Asus expects to ship only 10 million motherboards in 2026, down from 15 million last year, while Asrock projects a drop from 4.4 to 2.7 million as DIY builders skip purchases they can’t fully equip. * The DDR5 shortage has rippled outward, pushing Valve to likely delay its Steam Machine, forcing Apple to raise Mac prices, hiking console costs, and reportedly leading Nvidia to cancel its RTX 50 Super lineup. # ByteDance Bids for Video Leadership As OpenAI prepares to shut down Sora, ByteDance made its own video generation model available to hundreds of millions of users. **What’s new:** ByteDance added [Seedance 2.0](https://info.deeplearning.ai/e3t/Ctc/LX+113/cJhC404/VWxjsy2g5b1pW1F0Kyp4zPrdBVrHz2f5NR3c5N22w1023qgz0W7lCdLW6lZ3pqW6vcnKd1GBT9-N8mmtQDrfslQW55yVym2_xNrPW84GkLh3YbSNsVkQSVv7yzyr5W1qf90T7wZWPFW4Hm3Tc1wDKw0N4HD2BSp5lt3W5tZh448nkSq-W3PZ21N1QNn5vW6ZgRGk4z5hrKW9k_R8y6qLd0XW1kbBkD886hzLW96sWz53X1Qq2N305xbPbBrPyW5_YPrl4Rj4QkW3H786y7CvDT-W1rx8xr27MRlgW5gzhjH6WQ3M3W3-NrnG3Cj-FvW2T179w6Rh0xtW2STz-L45q0k0W1Cy-DS8MpCNLVzyrvp38rjzhf1xjK7g04), its multimodal video generator, to its popular video-editing app [CapCut](https://info.deeplearning.ai/e3t/Ctc/LX+113/cJhC404/VWxjsy2g5b1pW1F0Kyp4zPrdBVrHz2f5NR3c5N22w1023qgz0W7lCdLW6lZ3mpV1jppS7YHbj_VxFH634GMzwwV9W97f64W9-8W6KWtjP4VQ7Y7V1NVKQ6zKC9zW49cPdh6x1KlYW94Lhgv2VZBkrW4qDT-Q75sQZDN3BTYPvV6QkXW5Qwdxf1k56yvW2BqB0397rBQSW4_wgNW1wfcnjW1Zh2vJ2VBG-BW3lc4Gy1WH0tGW7pbW8f8FWxY5W7lx3M-4pbwWmN6pJ_jBn3kTKW25FL0h6fCSM8W5R8y8z3dWsmXW4f1wgl6j3tZdVN4Gsp75VbMwW2CJbNG8-8ZKSW9g2yx423gRjYW8WMRzx4wL9N-f9h3V-n04). Launched earlier this year in China, the model now reaches paying CapCut users in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, parts of Europe, Japan, and the United States. * **Input/output:** Text, images, audio, and video in (up to 3 video clips, 9 images, and 3 audio clips), synchronized video and audio out (4 to 15 seconds at 480 or 720 pixels on the shorter edge in 6 aspect ratios: 21:9, 16:9, 4:3, 1:1, 3:4, and 9:16) * **Features:** Lip-synced dialogue in multiple languages, ambient sound, music, multiple camera shots with cuts in a single clip, camera and lighting controlled by prompts, outputs marked by invisible watermark, blocking of input images that contain real faces or copyrighted characters (via CapCut) * **Performance:** Within top two on Arena AI and Artificial Analysis video leaderboards * **Availability/price:** Via CapCut (Jianying in China) paid tier, Dreamina web interface, API via the ByteDance services BytePlus and Volcengine, and third-party providers including [Higgsfield.ai](https://info.deeplearning.ai/e3t/Ctc/LX+113/cJhC404/VWxjsy2g5b1pW1F0Kyp4zPrdBVrHz2f5NR3c5N22w0_M3qgz0W6N1vHY6lZ3mwMX70nbYZrzxW2G-2sy4jZ2spMt1BVBx1ffnVXVK0_62H4jwW6ckbTf3tLlrvN4Wgj5wb9L6DN1Gh2HMq6-GjW8MK92X5kTKqGW4BTlHv77wJPpW5JKx9Y6__j_2W3_Pd0L42gV0VW2SQlDH4PcL4-W1VJ8VM8ryTn9N8Ql6YPQzmL9W47B8s45syVdDW6--rtv7NL5yCW8_Fk6c1Jr_T8N7zpVhRVHV0dW4_1Fnh6x_QDnV4Brld5nPrmxVqdBCl2NbP6xW2LRmJL1xCPRFf1qp8Qq04) for $0.30 per second of output (720 pixels, audio included) or $0.24 per second for faster processing by SeeDance 2.0 Fast * **Undisclosed:** Architecture, parameter count, training data and methods **How it works:** Seedance 2.0 [extends](https://info.deeplearning.ai/e3t/Ctc/LX+113/cJhC404/VWxjsy2g5b1pW1F0Kyp4zPrdBVrHz2f5NR3c5N22w0_M3qgz0W6N1vHY6lZ3mrW80-Dzb1QCg7bW4bycxR3_6P-SW1vpNB87W4LVtW82jb0Q34DKP4W52J_Zc366KqnW3ZBNM26RkrcGW23nLvR4l0K0fW1WWtZc2PY2L0W84B7LJ84hjggW7n57382tnbMcW11-XH26Zk1QsVMTTrZ2T-fl9W4W3gFv60QVdNVxpw223Rtl6WW63SgP798bcFCW1k-ldT3S6wrnW3fqbk34gC3prW2k9Mrv6Jj7qHW1gqb4w5CcxsKW6540Vw36VKNlW4Gry7M4ngNbbW2h42_93zRwkRf3r-DYC04) ByteDance’s earlier work from synchronous generation of audio-video streams in parallel to joint generation within a unified system. ByteDance’s [launch announcement](https://info.deeplearning.ai/e3t/Ctc/LX+113/cJhC404/VWxjsy2g5b1pW1F0Kyp4zPrdBVrHz2f5NR3c5N22w10l3qgz0W7Y8-PT6lZ3pbW4s0YLJ2qJ9sGW6qbp8W4kVmpkW6zs79-5yBqf2W5-9h-929HtkzW1H79g-3sZpdzW3FYBCl8rZrGmVdYbkg7LTHgcW2hTZ0726Lw5xW6dLYVX6vzrrRW8qm7Fw5z3FB6N2gDC_mjc4nfM2J-Z_R1h4QW7D_w3J1pG9F2W8Sh5vs73_4kgVVpqH53c65zwV4jKdJ5V4rkDW6h6p458glNLRW6tFsTw2hScqvN5V9p11Xl6CBW6Ss6tl206ZYBW33Cm3c2BSY41N2zjD5ZDy4CTN6zjpw3GRtp0VFwD1Y18LCt-N8WHdKcGqvSVVhtNnP2_ljG4f1Zp6Qg04) characterizes the architecture as “sparse.” # How Nvidia Uses AI to Design Chips Nvidia’s chief scientist dreams of telling an AI model to design a new GPU, then skiing for a couple days while the system does the job. He outlined Nvidia’s progress toward that goal and how far it has to go. **What’s new:** Bill Dally, who leads roughly 300 researchers at Nvidia, [described](https://info.deeplearning.ai/e3t/Ctc/LX+113/cJhC404/VWxjsy2g5b1pW1F0Kyp4zPrdBVrHz2f5NR3c5N22w10l3qgz0W7Y8-PT6lZ3mDN3pm_4YlvNzrW41wszr6M3zynW56wK_C7BcjXnW3qYgXb5hMGywW2Xdzfl4KKhTxW3BGvNy3G2MvLW4Bxr7-1SHRCvN87DHLBcyDwSW6wZ4pY2dzQdHVvmV9w6n8PbnW5xk80Q5PmmtxW6hBR2R6dVK4tW5zmNR273BNJ5N7KYm8yYzdT9W2h8hCh2Cy8WFW6Gqc-z5rsjQhW1MXyP82P8V-gW3zcH6J4lwQ4VW6cZk7_525J5WW37s8Cp3zpB7mV5pdGR3Bx98pN386GF52WGYSW8qxzfW6vjJDFW3_R40j6gSPCBW91JcTv705fV_N96jnrDbbSslf70wwhF04) AI’s growing role in designing the company’s chips in a conversation with his Google counterpart, Jeff Dean, onstage at Nvidia’s GTC conference in mid-March. His examples (starting in the video at around 24 minutes) ranged from a reinforcement learning system that lays out a chip’s building blocks to large language models trained on decades of proprietary documents. **How it works:** Nvidia applies AI at five stages of chip design: laying out components, designing arithmetic circuits (components that perform math on binary numbers, like adders and counters), general engineering assistance, verifying finished designs, and exploring novel layouts. # AI at Work, Quantified Half of workers in the United States used AI at work at least a few times last year, a sign of steadily rising AI adoption in U.S. workplaces. **What’s new:** Most U.S. workers who used AI found that it boosted their productivity, according to a [poll](https://info.deeplearning.ai/e3t/Ctc/LX+113/cJhC404/VWxjsy2g5b1pW1F0Kyp4zPrdBVrHz2f5NR3c5N22w10l3qgz0W7Y8-PT6lZ3q0W52yqpS4qVvcFW2D8sVX4cZNB4W4NYCPK13VvSmW35yJD06Tl9wRVdQRhn4Wyh0bW8tq-HD6QRnVMW8HZbqW6yBB3wW4yqgPG6dKKCBW1KLtsk2gB8lkW1Ynb0z7hwwlrW62HL_83WSLw0W1T68VD9dH_TqW8hqwTY8vvTrQW7bH7m-7xzP3RW7R3BXb5lSs3sW1Gbk5_6LV1FSW4PcZqP4kzwykF1HcQHN3xVwW5MVcJw1zCLNXW5cnMRK7Zp6t7N7gRjlwvRy6wW5rjn3J2rn1DHVqmmWW3KxTkSW12LGR16R_q9dW5hzPhW645KqMW1zpgs16DhLZKf1TL92M04) conducted by Gallup, an organization that surveys public opinion on a wide variety of topics. Respondents were most likely to use the technology when it fit into the way they worked and their employers supported it. Still, a sizable portion of employees and employers are holding out. **How it works:** Gallup surveyed 23,700 U.S. employees between February 4 and February 19 on a range of questions related to AI and work. They explored the technology’s impact on productivity, whether it is changing workflows, and whether organizations are supporting and integrating it. Some employees remain skeptical of AI, but the findings suggest that AI improves productivity and plays a larger role in organizations that support its use and provide suitable tools. * Regular AI use is rising steadily. For example, 13 percent of respondents said they used AI daily, and 28 percent used it a few times a week. These figures are up from 4 percent and 11 percent respectively in 2023. At the organization level, two in five workers said their employers had introduced AI tools into the workplace and a quarter of companies had clear AI strategies. * AI is boosting productivity but doesn’t yet substitute for established processes. Within companies where AI was used, 65 percent of employees said it improved their productivity, while 31 percent said it had changed the ways they worked. Only 7 percent of respondents who worked in organizations where AI was used disagreed that AI had affected how they worked. * Managerial support influences employees’ behavior and outlook. Employees with strongly supportive managers in organizations that used AI were more likely to use AI and agree it had transformed their work. * Low users and non-users widely indicated a desire to keep doing the work they do now. Other common barriers to AI adoption included ethical concerns, data privacy, and a belief or experience that AI wasn’t useful. **Behind the news:** According to some [accounts](https://info.deeplearning.ai/e3t/Ctc/LX+113/cJhC404/VWxjsy2g5b1pW1F0Kyp4zPrdBVrHz2f5NR3c5N22w0-T5nR3bW50kH_H6lZ3mSW6yqMl08Qpr_lW6l96C-6vczBmW5Fn8HB118tX1W87SzDr7MMCpzW15T50l5RWBWgW7Lcs9b8hbL3lW1PNMwB5Tm4JsW2fYd2B6S-Q6dW7_FgCt8wwcTQW1t1WTs1x6PSrW7-XPyw19FP-NW93GM9z260fmhW7GlKYR8jZRwBN8TYBGDgH5_qW5hWJLg5bh44FW5f8gKd7_rH4LW1mLjsm4F6k9hW4R32KV7vcjTHW22L34L4by83TW2fLVtN9cvkFyD16MsrnrvDW3QVQ114jWgWJM8BjCrWzGH3N7CPZpLr5XVmW6Dyyvn3vJDhhW807s0-1-KF_tW8_RqXV6V35SSW1J0hxH5jLrmwW4Kcx1_6rG9WzW4vdk548Yt4X0W6_N03q7N-_pmW83wP4F4cQnjJf6lzdmz04), AI’s impact has been disappointing relative to the promises made by tech evangelists. “AI is everywhere except in the incoming macroeconomic data,” such as metrics that gauge employment, productivity, and inflation, [writes](https://info.deeplearning.ai/e3t/Ctc/LX+113/cJhC404/VWxjsy2g5b1pW1F0Kyp4zPrdBVrHz2f5NR3c5N22w10l3qgz0W7Y8-PT6lZ3p0W6YBBPR5JjsWyW7HDr-q2HDQ90W1-ldtY6L4TSXW8NFZF12p_Lw1Vv1KB57n3zRBW7BBmm04ZgD8DW1CrJJL5fglrBW2s2Vq41bbzwhN3BRbjhQByl_W6Bn-7G7yCH24W1b5Lh22wZLrZW3vf5rs2lf4P4W2y-lJB19513CN8rt-TRw7Lq5VBnlyD2hr4dWW26lp4N8Jw4H9W1Ff0Bz4HpG1PN3mv-b_FgpBbW7xXlNx2Vknc5N1BbhHt3sNHBW2Y2b2P5T00WqW26j7xm2yB40lW2__6x_2YqW1BW6lHDh270-B_7N8XR2fzx4s1sW6ftpYY2971vJf7VzpGb04) Torsten Slok, chief economist at the investment firm Apollo. By other accounts, evidence is mounting that AI is impacting the job market. [Research](https://info.deeplearning.ai/e3t/Ctc/LX+113/cJhC404/VWxjsy2g5b1pW1F0Kyp4zPrdBVrHz2f5NR3c5N22w10Y3qgz0W95jsWP6lZ3ngW8Q-Z2c6K_WD9W6_z3kw4jhPJ4W1sDVNg6qyF41W6bdgVw5NT0r_W7nMhsR5DKwScW7Gw8Lx40jpWLW8lH2mz406hBlW8kkXMm1gqM23W4q9pYN7FFnLpW4_8Q6M47nPypW7_s2s25HSqCyW1G2Hfg7blx-0W1vNXT79673yBW4189VY1hT35nW8GjxkN5WTN61N507ZD2_1d6CW240s9K3hMQGJW2PNHSt3H-K7BW4vFvxm4G2tGnW4B5CVt6Gv_NFW4hbhd79ljZwPVpwqMD6DmSthW2Jwd5c8fwlmSW1KJcG69l2LxfVBMD1Y1kDJsCW8YT-J81c7_S6W7GdWPf7QM26wW6c25Tz4FvkXPW2zlH1g46FMFyW6V8Wqk8WMhmVf1QLdpP04) published by Stanford economists last year found that employment was declining for workers whose jobs may be affected by AI, such as software developers and customer-service representatives. **Why it matters:** The Gallup results suggest that workers use AI to help them do their jobs, not to do their jobs for them. This can be good both for workers, who may be freed of monotonous tasks, and their employers, which may gain productivity. But AI has the potential to automate some positions entirely. The jury is still out regarding whether AI-driven productivity gains will reduce or increase overall employment. # # Cloudflare cuts 1,100 jobs citing AI * Cloudflare is laying off more than 1,100 workers, about 20% of its staff, saying that agentic artificial intelligence has “fundamentally changed” how the company operates and reshaped which roles it needs going forward. * The cloud company beat analysts’ expectations in its first-quarter earnings reported Thursday, but shares still dropped 18% in extended trading after the workforce reduction was disclosed alongside the results. * CEO Matthew Prince called the cuts the “right decision” on the earnings call, and Cloudflare said its own use of AI has jumped more than 600% over the past three months under an “agentic AI-first operating model.” # OpenAI launches 3 new voice models * OpenAI has released three new voice models — GPT-Realtime-2, GPT-Realtime-Translate, and GPT-Realtime-Whisper — designed to reason, translate across languages, and transcribe speech in real time through the company’s Realtime API and Playground. * GPT-Realtime-2 brings reasoning on par with GPT-5, expands the context window from 32,000 to 128,000 tokens, calls multiple tools in parallel, and uses preambles like “one moment” instead of going silent during delays. * GPT-Realtime-Translate covers more than 70 input languages and 13 output languages at $0.034 per minute, while GPT-Realtime-Whisper handles streaming transcription for live captions at $0.017 per minute, with Deutsche Telekom already testing voice-to-voice support. # Google unveils Whoop-like screenless Fitbit Air * Google has launched the Fitbit Air, a $100 screenless wearable in the style of Whoop that tracks heart rate, AFib, blood oxygen, sleep stages, and heart rate variability around the clock. * The band weighs 12 grams, runs for up to a week on a charge with five-minute fast charging for a full day, is water-resistant to 50 meters, and pairs with the Pixel Watch. * Google also rebranded the Fitbit App as the Google Health app and opened up Google Health Coach, its Gemini-powered trainer and sleep advisor, to Google Health Premium subscribers, with the Fitbit Air shipping May 26. # Anthropic strikes massive deal with SpaceX * SpaceX, which recently took over xAI, has signed a deal giving Anthropic access to computing power at the Colossus data center, despite Elon Musk previously calling the Claude maker “Misanthropic,” “evil,” and an enemy of Western Civilization. * Anthropic said the agreement lets it double Claude Code’s five-hour rate limits for Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, drop the peak-hours cutoff for Pro and Max subscribers, and raise API rate limits for Claude Opus. * Musk also announced that xAI will be dissolved and folded into “SpaceXAI,” while Colossus 1 opens to Anthropic and SpaceX shifts focus to Colossus 2, which aims for 1 gigawatt of power but isn’t running at full capacity yet. # Murati tells court she couldn’t trust Sam Altman * Former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati told a court in a video deposition during the Musk v. Altman trial that she did not trust CEO Sam Altman, saying he lied to her about safety standards for a new AI model. * Murati testified that Altman falsely claimed OpenAI’s legal department had cleared a GPT model from going through the deployment safety board, but general counsel Jason Kwon contradicted that, so she sent the model through the board anyway. * Murati agreed Altman pitted executives against each other and undermined her, echoing cofounder Ilya Sutskever’s 52-page memo, though she still criticized the board’s firing of Altman, saying OpenAI risked falling apart before she left in 2024. # # Apple may drop $599 MacBook Neo * Apple is weighing whether to cut the $599 MacBook Neo with 256GB storage, a move that would push the laptop’s starting price up by $100 without raising the cost of any single configuration, according to Tim Culpan. * The pricing squeeze follows Apple telling suppliers to double production to 10 million units after stronger-than-expected demand, which drained A18 Pro chip inventory and ran into limited 3nm capacity at TSMC due to AI orders. * The first Neo batch used lower-bin A18 Pro chips with one GPU core disabled, but a fresh run would yield more fully working chips at a higher per-unit cost, and Apple may instead add new colors to soften a price hike. # Google shuts down Project Mariner AI agent * Google has discontinued Project Mariner, the experimental AI agent built to carry out tasks across the web, with its landing page confirming the May 4th, 2026 shutdown and noting the technology moved into other Google products. * Launched in December 2024 and later updated to handle up to 10 tasks at once, Project Mariner’s features were folded into Gemini Agent, which can archive emails or book hotels, and into AI Mode for search. * Google recently showed a Chrome feature called “auto-browse” that handles multi-step tasks like researching flight costs, and the Mariner shutdown may clear space for new AI tools debuting at I/O starting May 19th. # Spotify opens personal podcasts to AI agents * Spotify is now letting people bring AI-generated personal podcasts into its app through a new beta CLI tool that works with coding agents like OpenAI’s Codex, Anthropic’s Claude Code, and OpenClaw. * The imported podcasts, which can cover things like class note summaries or calendar briefings, show up in the user’s Spotify library for private listening and cannot be accessed by other Spotify users. * To set it up, users visit the tool’s GitHub page, log in to Spotify through a browser, then prompt their agent to generate a podcast on a topic and save it, receiving a Spotify link back. # Apple pays $250M over Siri AI delays * Apple has agreed to pay $250 million to settle a class action lawsuit over its delayed rollout of the “more personalized Siri” features that were first shown at WWDC 2024, without admitting any wrongdoing. * The settlement works out to about $25 per eligible device bought in the US between June 10, 2024 and March 29, 2025, though payouts could climb as high as $95 depending on claim numbers. * The lawsuit accused Apple of promoting AI features “that did not exist at the time, do not exist now, and will not exist for two or more years,” saturating airwaves to build consumer expectations around the iPhone’s release. # OpenAI plans 30 million phones in two years * OpenAI is fast-tracking an “AI agent phone” and could begin mass production in early 2027, with analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicting 30 million units will be built between 2027 and 2028 if plans hold. * The device will run on a customized version of MediaTek’s Dimensity 9600 chipset, with Kuo saying MediaTek will likely be the sole processor supplier, while Qualcomm and Luxshare are also working with OpenAI. * Kuo said the phone will use a dual-NPU architecture for heterogeneous AI compute, splitting tasks like image enhancement and object detection between two AI processors, plus an image signal processor with enhanced high dynamic range. # Apple opens iOS 27 to rival AI models * Apple will let iPhone, iPad, and Mac owners pick from several outside AI models to run features built into iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27, with the shift planned for this fall, according to people familiar with the matter. * The third-party AI services will handle tasks like generating and editing text and images across Apple’s software, expanding the company’s strategy to turn its devices into a broad AI platform rather than relying on a single provider. * The sources who described the plans asked not to be identified because the details are private, and the article does not name which outside AI models Apple intends to offer users when the new operating systems ship. # Publishers sue Meta over AI book piracy * Five book publishers — Hachette, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier, and Cengage — along with author Scott Turow, have filed a class action lawsuit accusing Meta and Mark Zuckerberg of pirating copyrighted books to train the Llama AI platform. * The complaint claims Zuckerberg personally authorized and encouraged the infringement, saying Meta reproduced and distributed millions of copyrighted works without permission or compensation, knowing the conduct violated copyright law. * Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold pointed to past rulings that training AI on copyrighted material can qualify as fair use, echoing a recent Anthropic case where a judge rejected copyright infringement but floated piracy as a separate path to damages. # Google tests Remy 24/7 AI agent * Google is testing an AI agent codenamed Remy that aims to turn the Gemini app into a 24/7 personal assistant for work, school, and daily life by taking actions on a user’s behalf. * According to Business Insider, Remy is built deep into Google’s ecosystem and can monitor things that matter to users, handle complex tasks proactively, and learn preferences over time, positioning it against OpenClaw, which OpenAI acquired. * Remy is currently in a “dogfooding” stage with employees testing it internally, and while no launch date is set, Google’s I/O event on May 19-20 could serve as the debut for the new agent. # OpenAI launches GPT-5.5 Instant for ChatGPT * OpenAI has rolled out GPT-5.5 Instant as the new default model in ChatGPT, replacing GPT-5.3 Instant, with the company saying it cuts down hallucinations in sensitive fields like law, medicine, and finance while keeping low latency. * The model scored 81.2 on the AIME 2025 math test versus 65.4 for the older version, and hit 76 on the MMMU-Pro multimodal reasoning benchmark compared to the predecessor’s 69.2. * GPT-5.5 Instant can pull from past conversations, files, and Gmail for personalized answers, starting on web for Plus and Pro users, and ChatGPT will now show memory sources that users can delete or correct across all models. # Apple explores Intel and Samsung for US chips * Apple is in early talks with Samsung and Intel to make chips in the US, hoping to secure backup options if TSMC cannot keep up with its demand for main chipsets in its devices. * TSMC handles roughly three-fourths of global chip fabrication, but the surge in AI chip orders is straining its capacity, pushing phone makers like Qualcomm to already lean on Samsung for parts of the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6. * Apple executives have reportedly toured Samsung’s $17 billion fabrication plant in Taylor, Texas, which is expected to come online by late 2026, though Bloomberg notes the discussions with both chipmakers are far from finalized. # White House considers tighter regulation of new AI models * The Trump administration is weighing an executive order that would set up a working group of tech executives and officials to review new AI models before release, a sharp turn from its earlier hands-off stance on the technology. * The shift followed Anthropic’s announcement of Mythos, a model so strong at finding software security flaws that the company withheld it from the public, prompting White House worries about a possible AI-enabled cyberattack on its watch. * Susie Wiles and Scott Bessent have taken over AI policy after David Sacks left in March, and they are also trying to repair ties with Anthropic after the Pentagon cut off its technology in a fight over a $200 million contract. # Coinbase cuts 14% of staff citing AI * Coinbase is laying off roughly 700 workers, about 14% of its staff, as CEO Brian Armstrong pushes a restructuring tied to crypto market volatility and a bigger push to use AI tools across the company. * The reorg flattens the company to five layers below the CEO and COO, lets leaders manage more than 15 direct reports, and asks managers to contribute more work themselves rather than just oversee others. * Coinbase will try “one-person teams” blending engineering, design, and product management roles using AI tools, and expects to take $50 million to $60 million in severance costs, according to an SEC filing. # Brockman discloses $30 billion OpenAI stake * OpenAI president Greg Brockman testified Monday that his equity stake in the company is worth close to $30 billion, while also revealing financial links to Sam Altman through investments in Altman-backed ventures and his family office. * Court records showed Altman gave Brockman an interest in his personal investment fund in 2017, which Musk’s lawyers argue may have hurt Brockman’s independence, citing an email from Musk associate Jared Birchall. * Brockman also acknowledged holdings in AI chipmaker Cerebras and fusion startup Helion Energy, both tied to Altman’s investment network, as Musk’s lawsuit seeks $150 billion in damages and OpenAI’s return to nonprofit status. # DeepMind UK staff unionize over military AI deals * Google DeepMind workers in London have voted to unionize, asking the company to recognize the Communication Workers Union and Unite the Union as joint representatives in a push to stop the AI lab from supplying its tech to the US and Israeli militaries. * The effort started in February 2025 after Alphabet dropped a pledge against using AI for weapons and surveillance, and gained urgency after a reported Google deal letting the Pentagon use its AI for “any lawful government purpose.” * If unionization succeeds, staff plan to demand Google exit its contract with the Israeli military, share more details on how its AI products will be used, and offer some assurance about layoffs driven by automation. # Meta deploys AI to detect underage users * Meta is rolling out AI age-detection technology to Facebook users in the U.S. for the first time, along with 27 European Union countries and Brazil, as part of new measures announced during a child safety trial. * Parents in the U.S. on Facebook and Instagram will get a notification linking to a blog post explaining how to check and confirm their teens’ ages, sent to all users Meta has identified as a parent. * The announcement lands during the second phase of a New Mexico trial where the state seeks $3.75 billion in damages and policy changes, prompting Meta to threaten pulling Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp from the state. # [**Ask.com**](http://Ask.com) shuts down after 25 years * [Ask.com](http://Ask.com) has officially closed its doors after 25 years online, with parent company IAC confirming on May 1, 2026 that it shut down its entire search business, ending one of the web’s earliest recognizable search brands. * Born in the late 1990s alongside Google Search, the platform started with a question-and-answer format and a butler mascot named Jeeves before rebranding to [Ask.com](http://Ask.com), but it steadily lost ground to Google’s ranking systems. * In a farewell message, IAC said “a very great search must come to an end” and thanked its engineers, designers, and the millions of users, noting that Ask’s natural-language approach foreshadowed today’s conversational search and AI tools. # AI beats doctors on diagnoses in Harvard study * OpenAI’s o1 model matched or beat board-certified emergency room physicians on diagnosis, triage and next-step care decisions in a new Science study, based on six experiments using real data from a Massachusetts medical centre. * The model stood out during early-stage triage, where it handled uncertainty better than doctors by making stronger use of unstructured notes and partial information, though both humans and AI improved as more data came in. * Researchers, including Harvard’s Arjun Manrai and commentators from Flinders University, warned that AI cannot read visual, body language or auditory cues, and called for prospective clinical trials covering safety, equity and cost-effectiveness before wider use. # Anthropic nears $1.5B Wall Street venture * Anthropic is close to sealing a roughly $1.5bn joint venture with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs, and General Atlantic that will push Claude into the portfolio companies owned by those Wall Street firms. * Anthropic, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman are each anchoring the deal at about $300m, Goldman Sachs joins as a founding investor at roughly $150m, and General Atlantic and others cover the rest. * The venture follows OpenAI’s DeployCo, which drew $4bn from five PE firms last month with a 17.5 per cent annualised return guarantee, while Anthropic’s smaller structure has no publicly reported guaranteed returns. # Amazon declares war on UPS and FedEx * Amazon is opening its freight network to businesses in retail, healthcare, manufacturing and other industries through a new service called Amazon Supply Chain Services, letting them move, store and deliver goods by ocean, road, rail and air. * The offering taps Amazon’s fleet of more than 100 cargo planes, over 80,000 trailers and 24,000 intermodal containers, plus warehouses, and includes distribution, fulfillment, parcel shipping, two-to-five-day delivery, warehousing and inventory forecasting. * The push targets the business-to-business shipping market, a high-margin segment for logistics firms, and mirrors the playbook of Amazon Web Services, which started in 2006 as internal infrastructure before becoming the biggest cloud provider. # Musk texts Brockman seeking OpenAI settlement * OpenAI’s lawyers have asked a federal judge to let Greg Brockman testify about an April 25 text in which Elon Musk floated a settlement, then warned Brockman and Sam Altman would become “the most hated men in America.” * The defense says the text shows motive and bias rather than settlement value, citing Federal Rule of Evidence 408 and arguing Musk is using the Oakland lawsuit to attack a competitor after launching xAI. * Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, not the nine-person advisory jury, will decide liability and remedies, which could include removing Altman and Brockman from leadership, disgorgement to the charity, and unwinding OpenAI’s for-profit conversion.

[](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!WRcJ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fced4ee67-e611-4413-9684-284fa4ddef07_3000x3000.jpeg) 🎧 **Listen Ads-Free:** Subscribe to DjamgaMind via **Apple Podcasts** for a pure, ad-free experience at [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/djamgamind/id6760446113](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/djamgamind/id6760446113) https://preview.redd.it/eif098qjh8zg1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c259c7f04202381239ef57fef1f59d4e908fb6de https://preview.redd.it/bsyetxpjh8zg1.jpg?width=3000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=99cb1891d1f4d47a64a85b5b8b76303557ebc7d2 \#DJAMGAMIND #AIRIA **Summary:** In today’s briefing, we analyze the transition from traditional applications to “Software 3.0.” We deconstruct the groundbreaking Harvard study where OpenAI’s legacy o1 model outperformed attending physicians in emergency room diagnoses. We explore the massive shifts in physical capital, including Amazon’s launch of “Supply Chain Services” to wage war on UPS and FedEx, and GameStop’s highly leveraged $55.5 billion bid for eBay. We also discuss the Pentagon’s new classified AI contracts, the ongoing Elon Musk vs. OpenAI trial drama, and the death of the iconic [Ask.com](http://Ask.com) search engine. https://preview.redd.it/pvcbnvioh8zg1.png?width=2752&format=png&auto=webp&s=82efeab1ef789d94e7d161f7795bc1d03b8adbf0 **Today’s Sponsors:** * 🛑**AIRIA:** The ultimate zero-trust AI security layer. Deploy autonomous agents safely without compromising your enterprise data. 👉 **Govern your agents:** [**HERE**](https://airia.com/request-demo/?utm_source=AI+Unraveled+&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_campaign=Q1+2026) * [**Djamgamind.com**](http://Djamgamind.com) **Important Topics:** * **AI Beats ER Doctors:** A Harvard study shows OpenAI’s o1 model outperforming attending physicians in ER triage and diagnosis (67.1% accuracy vs 55.3%). * **Software 3.0 & Neural Computers:** The industry is moving away from “vibe coding” apps toward “fat models” that generate dynamic, ad-hoc interfaces and analyses on demand. * **Amazon Logistics War:** Amazon launches “Supply Chain Services,” opening its 100-plane, 80,000-trailer network to B2B shipping to challenge UPS and FedEx margins. * **GameStop Bids for eBay:** Ryan Cohen launches a highly leveraged $55.5B bid for eBay, aiming to utilize GameStop’s 1,600 retail stores as fulfillment centers. * **Pentagon AI Expansion:** The DoD adds SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and others to classified networks, while maintaining its security blacklist on Anthropic. * **Musk vs. OpenAI Settlement Texts:** Lawyers seek to introduce a text message from Elon Musk floating a settlement while warning Sam Altman he would become “the most hated man in America.” * [**Ask.com**](http://Ask.com) **Shuts Down:** Parent company IAC officially shuts down the [Ask.com](http://Ask.com) search engine after 25 years online. * **Maryland Bans AI Grocery Pricing:** The state becomes the first to ban AI-driven dynamic pricing in grocery stores, imposing $25K fines for personalized markup algorithms. **🔗 RESOURCES** The AI landscape moves faster than a hallucinating LLM on a double espresso, which is why I’ve done the heavy lifting for you. Stop scrolling through generic “Top 10” lists and head over to the **AI Executive Toolkit** at [https://djamgamind.com/toolkit](https://djamgamind.com/toolkit) * **Find AI Jobs (Mercor):** Apply Here - [https://work.mercor.com/?referralCode=82d5f4e3-e1a3-4064-963f-c197bb2c8db1](https://work.mercor.com/?referralCode=82d5f4e3-e1a3-4064-963f-c197bb2c8db1) * **Google Workspace:** Professionalize your firm’s infrastructure with secure, cloud-based collaboration and branded communication: [*https://referworkspace.app.goo.gl/Q371*](https://referworkspace.app.goo.gl/Q371) * **AI Learning App Recommendation:** AI and Machine Learning For Dummies: [https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/ai-ml-tutor-pro/id1610947211](https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/ai-ml-tutor-pro/id1610947211) * Create and Host your own podcast at [https://rss.com/?via=005875](https://rss.com/?via=005875) ⚗️ **PRODUCTION NOTE**: **We Practice What We Preach.** *AI Unraveled* is produced using a hybrid **“Human-in-the-Loop”** workflow. [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!TWxf!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F67091ecc-ee02-4fb6-9df5-97080aa1f19b_3000x3000.jpeg) # Old AI model tops doctors in ER trial [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!tRKh!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fecf695ca-9c51-45da-8d70-7a79be801d29_1672x941.jpeg) A Harvard study [**published**](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/ss/c/u001.dSnm3kaGd0BkNqLYPjeMf8l3ZaRtIrF_Dyr5DQbYNny5SVOhaJmytgx6N2-ACDE_m8_ITUMm1IGCXFlFZtPdKR-tW0XQ1GyvnzZWCbqiyd0XA4Oi01jUSwURNlY1vaBJe53K5yAnHYi4VOCmSA8t5bbilb4pTMDl5MSzFZR4dVYOZQgipS_uDfzNGCQ5UgaV_XBXcy-DNXdZoYVunfbWGmu0S7NgHKP8mz2wsUQJwAl9tzgAG4iM4qnWFg8Rqp961fJ-eyMUNTjbo0G6VYM83_gLgiXol9TuPo9syH19LJ8/4qc/ckGYq5w3QpqnD7HEZIVBxQ/h6/h001.vna7RbXT6J7SH8S9Wx0LFHLCGFDZ0tnXgj684VqdpQ8) in Science just put OpenAI’s o1-preview (released in 2024) through 76 real ER cases, with the AI diagnosing patients more accurately than two physicians, despite using only raw electronic health-record text. **The details:** * The study compared OpenAI’s o1-preview model with two attending physicians across 76 real ER cases and three decision stages of patient care. * At initial ER triage, the model gave the correct diagnosis 67.1% of the time, compared to 55.3% and 50.0% for the two physicians. * The two separate physician reviewers tasked with scoring couldn’t tell which diagnoses came from the model and which came from the humans. * In one case, the AI [**flagged**](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/ss/c/u001.dSnm3kaGd0BkNqLYPjeMfypseQsEV75H34ph115JkRHFYl9x918lP30Lso-3CV_3AP4yOQcpTDFMWr6rusov-Gg6fIbeW3B7eBEwVm6XobkadwyTgy_R23fTWvdRPsKD_9iTYROPA2vvuz_tQUXoE607FyNMN0Dpuq0_nSW3viNczM4zaCDBIv_tf5D-lhe7woLt0nFpKfJunbPH8AjiYnHVnkTqUlehdQ5Gu65MzqcHTu-G1L_KNPxjTWvemxfPRgOTso5APKPrb988x_3cP9MRkaBRhr3J0PNlfulqIImI17EQzD5vrGtjylzRDQBH/4qc/ckGYq5w3QpqnD7HEZIVBxQ/h7/h001.R6bjLTJhDG9K008e7c4oOWCMKosqcVvRnI1pRVWkSIs) a rare flesh-eating infection in a transplant patient roughly 12 to 24 hours before the treating doctor caught it. **Why it matters:** Millions of people are already using AI daily for health questions, but studies like these are showing the usefulness can also flow the other way to the doctors themselves. If a model generations behind is already beating ER doctors, imagine what the frontier could look like inside the patient care process. # Pentagon announces new AI partners [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!CqzM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F795e4490-2949-4a1c-95dc-dee3ee673546_1672x941.jpeg) *Image source: Images 2.0 / The Rundown* The Pentagon [**added**](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/ss/c/u001.dSnm3kaGd0BkNqLYPjeMf6yzY5Cp3fK2sitpM0thoVH8olY14NuZO-g_M4jo-_hX4OCHT1QvkhMI3K3LpvC43bHNWEROXRBWkLeGQkri-O35N3FxWRr0C-OKEG3BRPQss44mpozccdLSjIXbE3GsJSAxjs09bYfHn68qRFNtkL3c0aGU2P-pqv5bd8pBoZZcRT45G84-C-lkQa9HBl1qZHyGkyZVZnJTNLNEYtMiDm64MEtcAIuRND0_cE-rrEtGPYjt0IQfxYVnJtSQ7qNJZ9DFz4IYTRMrRDjN07FfC1e7PMrt_sFkIrM44lNF0V-3la6PLLRCNgJcKNBr2k2MR2tZzvOViVP21JXqZsxTMvu7IRaWiWpWjWnUNWwpKs7-/4qc/ckGYq5w3QpqnD7HEZIVBxQ/h19/h001.8dvhZg1lHFT0B71iiFyhTgCTMyzeZ1ZXyhjdfADLE0k) 8 AI companies to its classified networks while excluding Anthropic, even as the Washington Post reports the new contracts have the same autonomous-weapons and surveillance limits for which Anthropic was blacklisted. **The details:** * The official agreement list names SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Reflection, Microsoft, AWS, and Oracle as the companies added to classified networks. * The Department of War said the new deals will “accelerate the transformation toward establishing the U.S. military as an AI-first fighting force”. * DoD CTO Emil Michael [**told**](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/ss/c/u001.dSnm3kaGd0BkNqLYPjeMf2GhsYFHFP3NR5IZpYUp6zdXb-Z-TUNgKOffsPMIF4XAYk436Aj3Rr8_iIl2UxXx-hchNKURPn3avgZDU1k2x2QeHsOKPAJuSAi8vtfz08B-_95XQWIrMKw7_mTO1aczrNGLUuUMd1wrgmOdAlPmksC3Jn91K2C6VfXr52HD2g846oRNYZaabTMA_vx29mkW-19nf8BwXn-ce4EH5usZBGqNrVhlA9M70O314MAQ9irL-ICYN7Rjw-i7posTwF0M2qds7JbeGcL9UEvW-rYBjTJzH7cX78oxeU1tdca1b-W3Gm_ssZ0zQGtL45hwvnXUyQ/4qc/ckGYq5w3QpqnD7HEZIVBxQ/h20/h001.jOy0p9ccvnV-O1bSmGxy5EGud8tco3tYCZAijn40gZQ) CNBC that Anthropic’s supply-chain risk label still stands, but called its Mythos model a “separate national security moment.” * Anthropic’s exclusion comes days after the White House came out against a broader Mythos rollout over compute concerns impacting its own access. **Why it matters:** The White House seemingly wants to have its cake and eat it too — both continuing to shun Anthropic while also wanting priority access to its Mythos model despite the blacklist. There are also some interesting names on that list, namely Reflection, which raised $2B from 1789 Capital, a Donald Trump Jr.-backed fund. # [**Ask.com**](http://Ask.com) shuts down after 25 years * [Ask.com](http://Ask.com) has officially closed its doors after 25 years online, with parent company IAC confirming on May 1, 2026 that it shut down its entire search business, ending one of the web’s earliest recognizable search brands. * Born in the late 1990s alongside Google Search, the platform started with a question-and-answer format and a butler mascot named Jeeves before rebranding to [Ask.com](http://Ask.com), but it steadily lost ground to Google’s ranking systems. * In a farewell message, IAC said “a very great search must come to an end” and thanked its engineers, designers, and the millions of users, noting that Ask’s natural-language approach foreshadowed today’s conversational search and AI tools. # AI beats doctors on diagnoses in Harvard study * OpenAI’s o1 model matched or beat board-certified emergency room physicians on diagnosis, triage and next-step care decisions in a new Science study, based on six experiments using real data from a Massachusetts medical centre. * The model stood out during early-stage triage, where it handled uncertainty better than doctors by making stronger use of unstructured notes and partial information, though both humans and AI improved as more data came in. * Researchers, including Harvard’s Arjun Manrai and commentators from Flinders University, warned that AI cannot read visual, body language or auditory cues, and called for prospective clinical trials covering safety, equity and cost-effectiveness before wider use. # Anthropic nears $1.5B Wall Street venture * Anthropic is close to sealing a roughly $1.5bn joint venture with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs, and General Atlantic that will push Claude into the portfolio companies owned by those Wall Street firms. * Anthropic, Blackstone, and Hellman & Friedman are each anchoring the deal at about $300m, Goldman Sachs joins as a founding investor at roughly $150m, and General Atlantic and others cover the rest. * The venture follows OpenAI’s DeployCo, which drew $4bn from five PE firms last month with a 17.5 per cent annualised return guarantee, while Anthropic’s smaller structure has no publicly reported guaranteed returns. # Amazon declares war on UPS and FedEx * Amazon is opening its freight network to businesses in retail, healthcare, manufacturing and other industries through a new service called Amazon Supply Chain Services, letting them move, store and deliver goods by ocean, road, rail and air. * The offering taps Amazon’s fleet of more than 100 cargo planes, over 80,000 trailers and 24,000 intermodal containers, plus warehouses, and includes distribution, fulfillment, parcel shipping, two-to-five-day delivery, warehousing and inventory forecasting. * The push targets the business-to-business shipping market, a high-margin segment for logistics firms, and mirrors the playbook of Amazon Web Services, which started in 2006 as internal infrastructure before becoming the biggest cloud provider. # Musk texts Brockman seeking OpenAI settlement * OpenAI’s lawyers have asked a federal judge to let Greg Brockman testify about an April 25 text in which Elon Musk floated a settlement, then warned Brockman and Sam Altman would become “the most hated men in America.” * The defense says the text shows motive and bias rather than settlement value, citing Federal Rule of Evidence 408 and arguing Musk is using the Oakland lawsuit to attack a competitor after launching xAI. * Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, not the nine-person advisory jury, will decide liability and remedies, which could include removing Altman and Brockman from leadership, disgorgement to the charity, and unwinding OpenAI’s for-profit conversion. # GameStop bids $56 billion for eBay * GameStop has made an unsolicited, non-binding offer to buy eBay for $125 per share in a cash-and-stock deal worth about $55.5 billion, a 20% premium over eBay’s Friday closing price of $104.07. * GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen, who told the Wall Street Journal he wants to turn eBay into a bigger rival to Amazon, has built a 5% stake and secured up to $20 billion in debt financing from TD Bank. * The bid raises feasibility questions since GameStop’s market value was $12 billion versus eBay’s $46 billion, but Cohen plans to cut $2 billion in yearly costs and pitch GameStop’s 1,600 stores as fulfillment infrastructure. # Anthropic, OpenAI raise billions for PE push: The world’s leading AI labs are raising billions ([$4 billion for OpenAI](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/v1/c/XBPkSO638gub8%2FvQRK%2Fc0xVlJ3vlZZjA7pvLBB%2FJO3KoHsTPdCXh0MiRNjm6%0AVyXyYECERWMY%2F32bDPaEJNhHt9qgdxV6PBukX3JD0jGG05uCpbsYx2GOcmds%0Aw0SC0%2FvP1GnWE%2FXfY3uJxJ9JU8Hu%2FWqnJ9rKQjcpzInlXEp21C%2FlmCKgPc1s%0A6TndOmMaPZvavDsTn2zs8pPkz4os3sUsFw%3D%3D%0A/f086c473c4ec64e0), [$1.5 billion for Anthropic](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/v1/c/8L8Jd7oNcdIOE3zPCbo0dxyWiESC7gKNh5YuCkBWg%2BBRBnpdpNxK6fzXT%2Bol%0A1sY9gCNgVLc1f0jLpZem%2FHz8CI55EFLoBBuLgPpCHY0Djm7Z%2F7vpXHTM68iv%0An6efnIW8k4kg385hJBcbAN1L%2BzN%2B2ZVmxufBt4FrOPdb4ZU5AV0opRHAa82x%0AbJKk2A3o6ZQbtdnjnkuVtzg6ssybIzuR9A%3D%3D%0A/03ddfc7eefb4c224)) to help bring AI into private equity portcos. No, it’s not surprising that companies owned by the cost-conscious want to replace some (expensive) humans with (theoretically less expensive) AI. The two model giants are dueling for enterprise market share, and neither appears set to lose a single deal without a fight. # Cerebras targets $115-$125 share price in upcoming IPO: AI chip company Cerebras’s IPO is making good progress, with a [new SEC filing](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/v1/c/nBp9C2bImZ%2F9y5C2REGKveYaHGXeGRKCOGt7PZWHctJIuBilQrlL8JU%2Bypfw%0AvJslCFM7ajIEIbib3%2BVEsqrZhpSoxDs%2Fc5xQFDq%2BhljS6NbzIRD9V3wjiao7%0AmOnhlG%2FTWIWUcD7tc123LtyMzXgmRip%2F9l2na%2Frsr8vytt8ypgkJI61ttpEM%0ANAnQVy0IOAV5tOELLWbNZHmZyNElik%2Bebg%3D%3D%0A/0cdab379e2e243b9) stating it intends to [raise more than $3 billion](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/v1/c/GCXwy4KqQfwJ55j%2BptlFwYNe8Uvje8XAkCutY4K%2BlVo6Y80D2psYSqUMfWes%0A7OALne17GvjfefmAoZNu2UhmN%2F0wnJN9OquZDMCEuFmiZgQw1fQcmltdeLxK%0AzBHlwuBkowew2K7%2FPlDCdT2S8N2rsN37rf0bZYknb7wnSdXGiRwWJoobpkgT%0A8EsslPMxBzEHF%2FuYJIf9KPecPqBvc7cW4Q%3D%3D%0A/a6bab5b85e8ae450) at a price well over $100 per share. For recent investors, the price is a win. For investors who bought in even earlier, the price is an even bigger victory. # European foundation models? SAP is on a buying spree. The software giant intends to [snap up Dremio](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/v1/c/BlpcQHKxQStSXXSJ%2BNPDG%2F9KPgL%2BMH%2FfB54XBV33RX3mH6xqqCFBemYIuqu3%0AUNdk7P9%2FBBmtwel2kKhaXGSFzWRi65t8Kb1br3n%2BjPLnIAtU6yYcuzgGFYTM%0AgKUPDAgkMRilXkyvJGLmADbYOQCoVJUoEAeEllwuYgY3DzRhomka5iqcta2Y%0A%2B7TkyrbstWWvCzMXedlKpgBSA3be%2B%2BwDKw%3D%3D%0A/46a6ed55e22444ac) to help its customers prepare their data for AI agents, and is also [buying Prior Labs](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/v1/c/CBczwt6jql%2BbGHUP8KUnLRi4mORBFTYUMWRNr4Oj2%2FARzSawnGvGL%2BvBUaKm%0AsEyuWlqiZTdvwkQ67KXG4mawcsUvmJm%2FCNmkyrrqNR2sugypAfkMYr0cCYd0%0A%2FeiyhCicTg0SoGv8BoYTyaHq0cvS%2BZy%2F%2B7uh7PSiGP1Nnb03%2FP4wDzN6FsRi%0AP8Uhc72pvABBQp%2Fs96O9WuxKgR25VAwDsQ%3D%3D%0A/ad553d97dda044ae), a German AI lab building tabular foundation models, or TFMs. Unlike LLMs, TFMs are aces at handling structured business data, which is right up SAP’s lane. Even better, SAP intends to invest “more than €1 billion over the next four years to scale \[Prior\] into a globally leading frontier AI lab for \[structured\] data.” # Neural Computers # by John Coogan There’s been rumblings about the potential for a Neural Computer for years now since the AI boom began. The basic idea is that the computer would have no software whatsoever, essentially just an LLM that generates whatever you need as you are using the device. Karpathy put it this way: “Imagine a device that takes raw videos or audio into basically what’s a neural net and uses diffusion to render a UI that is unique for that moment.” It feels like we’re starting to see glimpses of this now. I most recently felt it while trying to understand Ryan Cohen’s proposal for GameStop to takeover eBay for $55.5B. I haven’t tracked either company closely, and I wanted to quickly understand how the two companies size up. In a pre-ChatGPT world, I would have pulled stats from Google or Yahoo Finance, maybe copied them into a spreadsheet if I wanted to see them side-by-side (although Google and Yahoo both offer company comparison views, they are always a bit tricky to navigate). Then if I wanted to share the findings, I could screenshot the sheet, or if I was feeling really fancy, design a slide linked to the data. Now this whole process is a single prompt. [](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!hsgQ!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc130531f-649b-4d99-bbbb-6569f9143185_1100x1100.jpeg) *Prompt: “Do a bunch of research on GameStop and eBay’s valuation and key financial metrics, things like growth rate, top line, earnings, revenue, valuation, how the multiples fit together. Build a nicely designed side-by-side comparison of the two companies.” - ChatGPT 5.5 Thinking w/ Images* It’s not a perfect result, I’d probably not use red for all of GameStop’s data because red is usually saved for negative numbers. It’s a good start though and I could easily ask for that change. And obviously you could take this a lot further, delivering an updated image every quarter after earnings drops, or every day if you wanted, or for any other two companies, or for anything else you want. I think the end result is fewer dashboards and more ad hoc analyses delivered on demand to answer the exact question you have at the moment. Karpathy describes this concept as “Software 3.0” [in his Sequoia AI Ascent talk](https://substack.com/redirect/84fee366-4c2c-44db-834b-50330a63f57d?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) and gave an example of shifting from a vibe-coded app to a fully AI workflow for a project that would annotate menus: > I have a few takeaways from this: First, I think it’s exciting for anyone who’s been hesitant to jump into vibe coding. Frontier models are already able to, in 90% of situations, instantiate exactly whatever’s required to solve an actual problem on the fly under the hood, entirely abstracting away code and tools. Second, I’m reminded of the [2016 USV blog post “Fat Protocols”](https://substack.com/redirect/fc157cd8-6884-4006-a8e2-a135eb080244?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) which argued that unlike “thin protocols” of the web era like HTTP, FTP, etc. (which accrued minimal value), in crypto, Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. would be “fat protocols,” do a lot of valuable work, and potentially be more valuable than the application layer that enabled interaction with them. There’s still a bunch of complicated market dynamics around value accrual in the AI value chain, but in terms of doing useful work, the models are certainly getting “fatter” every month to use the USV terminology. Third, there’s still the question of walled garden jumping. The internet isn’t quite “dead” yet, there’s a lot of good information out there, but many, many platforms are fairly locked down, so writing code, puppeteering a browser running on a Mac Mini, or digging through iMessage locally can still require a different workflow, but that’s more of a legal and business discussion than a technical one. The models will continue to find their way over, under, and through any cracks in the walls of the gardens if users ask politely enough. There’s still a long way to go here, inference is expensive, everything is slow, and models still make odd mistakes (although less and less these days). I’m still enjoying the image output workflow and it feels like moving up a level of abstraction is more qualitatively binary than a slightly higher score on a particular benchmark. # What Else Happened in AI on May 04th 2026? **OpenAI** [**shipped**](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/ss/c/u001.s9F2vg9H0NMFC01qj9PgtKUxw7_b5vs2sQLbPNoRAQv6tJHX3-05W8FBBGX_uY3fqi_9PqegsxR1fmWYpeqVMP198vizdA5rPip8Mgb9Z7RBJF3nXeHAWCBZ1pmdxbEV5uo8LIdvnCSpODTcEQsG-q2SeKY1hi_HZWqwkQpnByE0to1RAxECCqF2WAtslc1N3dT8dXX43_94atRJTfdJ97hupkvUiXpZ9bGAGxAAUPl-o5QH-l2m5s-IoLFzrxAUcmsC5s5KhfmojpY7rIIVQ0co9yGHaIjJ-y_Dqh5BkGo/4qc/ckGYq5w3QpqnD7HEZIVBxQ/h27/h001.vknnSq3s6V9EldMm_8ZxBCeUwTEtb7Gi-86NZlKmGs0) Codex Pets, animated desktop companions that let you track agent progress without switching back to the app. **OpenAI CEO Sam Altman** [**announced**](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/ss/c/u001.6k0_SAz8nrOuu_-LoNX1HfqGVtU0Kpfcch_H6377P4FGcLVF9nvFnq94fY_xDlL5T_mifZipakPwONuE92ypMNeGW_m6hW9uPb6xgVD5BuINyyQ60shLcoyFncSdn_lc1FkCBFHYcXrbBaBRbn1PfR7sODgjScDkIEOWKCkD1dj8uRsdH1gvRFf1foPM8beMw1eFGDyERmpwQhlpaTnPlcDGYjP4slw9hF2XsNBwpbIC3A6MJ-XE5RNgJ5f0N4L8FTevzfXPsIUm0_JlYO4lf2CZaZw2LTDe0F2k9dJyLkM/4qc/ckGYq5w3QpqnD7HEZIVBxQ/h28/h001.vK0U9OR5UB6T5U7---HS7oxIxz3UtBqIirreujZGaNg) that OpenClaw users can use their ChatGPT subscriptions within the agentic tool, taking a stance against Anthropic’s [**restrictions**](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/ss/c/u001.dSnm3kaGd0BkNqLYPjeMf022yDnKIUiG8l1A8gWu3xsEj597tU59-HJrlXh7Wg51Xn0nKzQEFJPY4EBkOf7zOx_eHxD4GDzxWt7RduC4Ipu6nKiph0OVLHbR4PZpI60_8jHdyeNA8U3Gy52c9EHt_t_EO1KKD6bRiJHlpJmZccobLifxVVK0LWMbxrNAXggUhMvdBOzCd4gMyg0ZrYA-nA9daWr9OUfAgQ-QdHu-cSyLx7FmF4y6RlDMIEChdlHABiLDPL4POE8J1qq9J84UXa090fL85BqZMDpjn1UP0KGeDXyhl0pMHbp0UjujXEzx/4qc/ckGYq5w3QpqnD7HEZIVBxQ/h29/h001.U57siSoZx5HKAK53HYY-4jaKK_agj4syA6ylnc1fobo). **Maryland** [**signed**](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/ss/c/u001.dSnm3kaGd0BkNqLYPjeMfz3sRxipJonf99jMXlaKZFdufKuN3imiexe47zZH6UdKZNvH8dydjSx5U5kSzgSr0y7iSvIjHF6NMNM55F-QEkBYJKBvPAUhXlvIlXgnIGjggezZgNZFSWkELgejFoswee-qZ4oM_F1ZRXnSSBkWIY1RNIvRDMRJtkDrb9pY01tiqEvas3vVp5t752j93ghsUwVHgDNEtrEh6qidGMOo5RhQIlOsv9euohy-6QtNI9gP6ocJ4JtbEj1ulXBb6VqhgczADlQ6WCw3zNhhXsFnyDlI4qELIExBJVY03Rh8GcP1LrKHfKMKIKdz6JpF8V5XfQ/4qc/ckGYq5w3QpqnD7HEZIVBxQ/h30/h001.1hZ08i3tDFvhPzfupT9yHkz8LQpfKMd5Ck3hrYFPBrM) the U.S.’s first ban on AI-driven grocery pricing, with fines up to $25K for stores caught using personalized shopper data to mark up prices. **SAG-AFTRA** [**secured**](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/ss/c/u001.s9F2vg9H0NMFC01qj9PgtKpsPZhrvcEh8apjceucNZv7zeG2rsgRAZ6WfWrea1GbuROxCCneoD171FnJTxMa6KyH_VtQK3H7SEFl0J_tm_FFXzASIxC1wco-iKokPHu4G8E2E6SJDgDYe6ah50kvgn3ve6Un3QnKX7xfNugziGA52Ridrwobt5C8wZ5A12_yMXPbqurCZS_LGbmksSLgIyLBrDNRETL9ZtxhJe11Ea5gCr0nobFFryLSKeLfhOT5JUWmZ1cj5SD-gA81hdrdF_ehFxY1YzSlKuiLYKFct16iWgCJohnOQ80vw_NMiJTz7SUfRrYvofv3PxJTjWGZUw/4qc/ckGYq5w3QpqnD7HEZIVBxQ/h31/h001.zt7Fm_g6KLinUnpDaA-Z987srncm3W1prAAz8ODUU8o) new AI guardrails in its four-year studio deal, with the guild’s negotiator refusing to sign until Hollywood studios made concessions on AI protections. **A Chinese court** [**ruled**](https://link.mail.beehiiv.com/ss/c/u001.dSnm3kaGd0BkNqLYPjeMf6FnRc8A4-2tPTDM6RqeUQDnAHSDq852esV-Vox4sKHyk9Z-4zT0Ir0jJTPZ7JA1mPgjSSRduMGEWFfFVWJ8EojOjvBaaPutPngYDDtnysKr7_Cs8n0BeHF-n7iETvgAQ3FY6CesD353De0caGKEh-Qh7oxK2v4KmUjM9GGZO_cYj0SLICFsrT8yaUe7N9x0kyH-KiSM4CIjCyIerHTf5utkL-hSHBfpZAKV8-mHypwG4DRzeTA7w_E4gcrkqITWnaWNK7XQ9liehif3iBSLFj-O7cf73yoavlN4FDdW1c11/4qc/ckGYq5w3QpqnD7HEZIVBxQ/h32/h001.A8lb8eBA8qttuLgdGYnP0ZwVjpwzx0F_-l6Aze5QQlY) that replacing a worker with AI does not legally justify firing them, ordering a tech firm to pay wrongful termination damages. [The Information: XAI Shows How Hard It Is to Use a Lot of GPUs at Once](https://substack.com/redirect/4cc3f72b-f743-422f-9dd4-36748229c871?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [➞ Lambda response: “The xAI “low utilization” story has people mixing up two different metrics”…](https://substack.com/redirect/9f9fe587-9c23-4f2a-9c8b-4947166c77fe?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [WSJ: GameStop Offers to Buy eBay for $56 Billion](https://substack.com/redirect/510e88a8-a549-4ddf-b2c6-667fd870c1c5?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [Reuters: Cerebras targets $26.6 billion valuation in US IPO as AI chip demand surges](https://substack.com/redirect/984a558b-d9c5-4593-84e5-e7842c58519b?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [Cofounder Jack Clark says he thinks there’s a 60% chance of AI reaching recursive self-improvement by the end of 2028](https://substack.com/redirect/fc2a8982-db2c-4b46-9db0-cddd1a1d1db6?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [Bloomberg: OpenAI Finalizes $10 Billion Joint Venture With PE Firms to Deploy AI](https://substack.com/redirect/748a3577-62eb-4bb6-be0a-78674ef1fe4f?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [Roon post on Anthropic as an organization that “worships” Claude goes viral](https://substack.com/redirect/9e32c1f7-55b0-444a-bfaa-5062ab36b8d5?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [Mayo Clinic: Mayo Clinic AI helps specialists detect pancreatic cancer up to 3 years before diagnosis in landmark validation study](https://substack.com/redirect/8e2e4053-2801-45b0-9b13-e440a130c89f?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [WSJ: OpenAI Wants to Go Public. First Sarah Friar Needs to Get It to Grow Up.](https://substack.com/redirect/57108a26-5081-43d1-9c88-4a741227b7df?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [NYT’s Ezra Klein: Why the A.I. Job Apocalypse (Probably) Won’t Happen](https://substack.com/redirect/eecf66cb-3d9d-40ed-93d6-dd659cb05757?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [NYT: A.I. Is a National Security Risk. We Aren’t Doing Nearly Enough.](https://substack.com/redirect/ee1e9057-1588-4b0e-b512-d6abc3a59205?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [WSJ: Why Almost Everyone Loses—Except a Few Sharks—on Prediction Markets](https://substack.com/redirect/4b66a3ae-a59f-4471-9062-64a075fadbd2?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [Patrick Collison: Stripe Atlas hits 100,000 all-time incorporations](https://substack.com/redirect/2440aa0c-519d-4495-92be-713b735aac5e?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [Rex Salisbury: Erebor hits $1.1 billion in deposits](https://substack.com/redirect/9bf2e5ac-1725-4fbc-87fa-3c2cf4618ddb?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [Charlie Billelo: 0.1% of the accounts on Polymarket have earned 67% of the profits](https://substack.com/redirect/9a207b27-2123-4c38-a59b-e176804b6eab?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc) [Politico Europe: EU accused of wasting €20B on AI computing dreams](https://substack.com/redirect/e67fa638-f924-43fa-9ff8-b60fac796fbf?j=eyJ1IjoibGd4aHEifQ.AEEwNo9u4c-Yd-EjVJoVC71m13lNOy6HaFEyVpDc_Vc)

Hi [r/ShopifyeCommerce](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShopifyeCommerce/) \- I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my [Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter](https://www.shopifreaks.com/). Every week for the past 5 years I've posted a summary recap of the week's top stories on this subreddit, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition. Let's dive in to this week's top e-commerce news... ___ **STAT OF THE WEEK:** It would cost each of America's 135 million households roughly $67 per year to subsidize the United States Postal Service's $9 billion annual deficit. This is roughly 10% of what each household pays in taxes to support U.S. military and defense spending. Subsidizing the postal service with taxpayer dollars could help keep the cost of postage lower for the 3.5 million e-commerce businesses and 9 million marketplace sellers that directly depend on USPS for delivery, while continuing to provide stable local jobs for postal service workers. ___ **OpenAI** is scaling back its plans to introduce shopping directly inside the general ChatGPT chatbot, pivoting instead to a focus on having checkouts take place inside of specific apps within its interface. Shoppers will now either need to pay through a retailer's app or be redirected to their website to complete purchase. That's okay, right? I'm sure the 9 people who ever used Instant Checkout for a single purchase will move on. If they had to choose, they'd probably rather have GPT-4 back anyway. The reality of e-commerce in 2026 is that 50% of U.S. sales happen on Amazon and Shopify, as we learned a couple of weeks ago, and checkout on either platform couldn't be any easier or faster for consumers. Instant Checkout was a solution looking for a problem, without the infrastructure in place to actually solve it. ___ **Speaking of AI shopping… Meta** is testing a shopping research feature inside of its AI chatbot, enabling users to search for product recommendations and receive a carousel of product images that include captions with information about the brand, website, and price. Meta also offers a brief explanation of its recommendations as a bullet-list below the carousel. The recommendations are personalized to each shopper, based on the obscene amount of information that Meta has on its users, including their gender and location. For example, when asked to find puffer jackets, Meta AI's response referenced the author's location in New York and offered options for women's puffers. Bloomberg notes that there is no checkout or payment option within the chatbot, but users can click on the product links to view the item on the merchant's website. As we learned from OpenAI's experience with agentic commerce, Meta isn't missing out on anything by not offering it! ___ **Amazon** is exploring technology that would help other apps and websites sell ads within AI chatbots, according to *The Information* sources who spoke to the company about its plans. Sources said that in recent months, Amazon Publisher Services, which is the division of its ad business that helps websites run ad auctions, has held discussions with some websites and outside firms about how it could work with them to power chatbot ads, similar to how it currently serves as a middleman between retailers and publishers via its demand-side platform. Amazon employees pitching the idea have pointed to Pinterest as a potential user of such a technology. Given how expensive it would be to create such an offering in-house, and the expertise required to do so, I can see the appeal of employing Amazon to do the heavy lifting. ___ **OpenAI** partnered with **Criteo** to sell its chatbot ads, according to a public announcement, and is in talks with **The Trade Desk** to do the same, according to sources. *Adweek* reports that Criteo's integration will roll out in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, *The Information* reports that OpenAI has also held early talks with The Trade Desk to sell its ads. No wonder Jeff Green bought $150M worth of company stock! OpenAI says that it plans on eventually building its ad tech functions in-house, putting it more in line with Meta, Google, and Amazon, but I feel like I've been hearing that story for a long time now. Perhaps it's a smarter, safer route to work with existing ad networks to automate sales and provide performance metrics to buyers. It's a faster go-to-market strategy. ___ **Anthropic** is launching a new marketplace for its corporate customers to purchase third-party software applications that use its LLMs, with options initially including services from Snowflake, Harvey, and Replit. Anthropic does not plan on taking a cut of the purchases and will allow its customers to use some of their committed annual spending on its own services toward these third-party tools, which makes sense given that some of the money will eventually flow back to Anthropic via token usage. Despite the company's recent friction with the Pentagon, Anthropic believes that the government restrictions won't affect its business that's unrelated to specific Pentagon contracts. ___ **Google** was issued a patent that describes a system that automatically generates personalized landing pages in place of a brand's own website when its algorithm determines that the existing page is a poor match for the user's search intent. The feature primarily targets e-commerce and paid advertising use cases, with all examples pointing to shopping pages, product feeds, conversion rates, and sponsored content rather than editorial or informational sites. Ah okay, so an AI-generated page that Google can serve more ads on? Sounds about right. Imagine a landing page that displays the specific product's information at the top, followed by a grid of sponsored shopping results for similar products. That's undoubtedly where this is headed. Of course, it would also provide an additional channel for Google to own the transaction through its new Universal Commerce Protocol, effectively turning Google into the world's biggest e-commerce marketplace that merchants never signed up to sell on. ___ **Google** is lowering its Android app store fees in the US, UK, and EU to 20% or less, down from 30%, by June 30th, as well as making other major changes to its app store policies following a jointly proposed settlement with Epic Games this past November. While the settlement is still pending approval by the courts, Google has decided to go ahead with the changes. Additionally, Google is launching a “Registered App Stores” program outside of the US so that users can download and install third-party app stores, like the Epic Games Store, from the web without any headache. Google will not charge developers ongoing fees on purchases made through those stores, only a one-time registration fee of a few hundred dollars. Lastly, app developers will now be able to offer their own billing systems alongside Google Play's billing for in-app purchases, which in practice means that Google is separating its billing fees from its service fees in calculations. ___ **Wait, there's more! And it's not so epic…** As part of the settlement, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, who has historically been one of the most vocal critics of Google's app store practices, has agreed to not only stop criticizing the company's app distribution policies and fees, but to actively advocate that Google and Android are “procompetitive and a model for app store operations.” The term sheet also restricts Sweeney from pushing for further changes to Google's app store policies, requires him to make good faith public statements supportive of the deal, and may obligate him to defend the agreement in courts around the world. The restrictions are tied to Google's timeline for implementing fee changes, which are expected to be complete by September 2027 at the latest, meaning Sweeney may not be free to criticize Google's app store until September 2032. ___ **Apple** entered discussions with **Google** to host an upcoming version of Siri on Google's data center servers with strict privacy standards, potentially moving away from its original plans to host the Gemini models on its own infrastructure. The arrangement would further deepen Apple's reliance on Google, which already provides cloud capacity for iCloud storage and the training of Apple's in-house AI models. Former Apple employees told *The Information* that the company has historically mismanaged its cloud infrastructure and that only 10% of Apple's Private Cloud compute capacity is in use on average, with some servers still sitting in warehouses uninstalled. ___ **Meta** is testing two new retail media tools including “product set optimization” and “product insights” that let brands finally measure whether their ads on Facebook and Instagram are actually driving product sales, according to *Adweek* sources. The first tool lets retail media networks build product catalogs around individual SKUs so Meta's algorithm can optimize ads for specific products rather than just the retailer, solving a longstanding limitation that made it difficult for a Dick's Sporting Goods, for example, to run an effective Nike-specific campaign. The second tool closes the loop on attribution by tying sales back to a specific brand or product rather than just the retailer, giving product manufacturers proof of performance on their ad spend. ___ **Stripe** released a preview of a new feature that enables AI companies to pass through and mark up the cost of LLM token usage to their customers. The tool tracks API prices across models like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, records customer token usage, and applies the markup automatically, giving AI startups more granular control over pricing for high-volume users. Alongside the feature release, Stripe also launched its own AI gateway for accessing multiple models, but the new billing feature still works with popular third-party gateways like Vercel and OpenRouter as well. ___ **Amazon** is shutting down the Wondery podcast network and the $5.99 monthly Wondery+ subscription service, pushing listeners to subscribe to Audible via a discounted plan. Amazon acquired the Wondery podcast network in 2020, which is home to popular podcasts like “How I Built This with Guy Raz,” “New Heights,” and “Armchair Expert.” The Wondery brand will continue to produce its own podcasts, but no longer on its own dedicated app. The shutdown follows a corporate reorganization last year that moved narrative programming to the Audible brand and eliminated 100 jobs. ___ **Walmart** is now permitting sellers to offer free product samples to help boost their reviews via a new option called Recognized Reviewer, which lives inside its Review Accelerator. For products that already have sales, but less than 15 reviews, sellers can incentivize buyers after purchase to increase review rate. For newer SKUs with very few reviews, sellers can provide free samples to trusted Walmart reviewers to leave honest, labeled feedback. In both cases, sellers are responsible for covering the product cost, shipping, and applicable fees, only being charged for reviews that are published.  ___ **Stripe** partnered with **Affirm** and **Klarna** to integrate their BNPL payment options into its Shared Payment Tokens protocol, a tool introduced in October that allows AI agents to make purchases with a shopper's permission and preferred payment method, without exposing sensitive credentials. The integration enables shoppers to see the total cost upfront and select a repayment plan when an AI assistant is helping them browse and buy. The feature is available now for Stripe's direct merchants, with support for merchants that process payments outside of Stripe coming later this year. Stripe also expanded its Shared Payment Tokens to support Mastercard Agent Pay and Visa Intelligent Commerce. ___ **Depop** is increasing its Boosted Listing ad fees from 8% to 12%, effective March 23, and the company is encouraging sellers to take advantage of the lower rates now. The company noted that the increased fee “will only apply to new boosts from that date onwards, so any listings boosted before March 23 will continue to be charged the current 8% fee.” Honestly, not a bad strategy to encourage sellers to boost their listings. Sellers are already blaming eBay for the move, even though it hasn't even finalized its acquisition of Depop yet! However eBay is likely not to blame, as Depop had already announced the same fee increase in the UK in November 2025, so it was just a matter of time before it hit the US market. ___ **eBay** is offering select sellers zero Final Value Fees on up to 25 items that they list in Baby, Fashion, and Home Decor categories between now and the end of March, in a move that Liz Morton of *Value Added Resource* sees as a response to Vinted's recent push into the US market, where the European resale platform charges sellers no fees at all. The invite-only promotion mirrors a playbook eBay ran in the UK before eventually going fully fee-free for private sellers, which some analysts also attribute to Vinted's growing competitive pressure in the region. The promotion is a notable reversal from eBay CEO Jamie Iannone's previous stance that the US market is different from the UK and that the company had no plans to introduce free selling in the States. ___ **More than 83% of ChatGPT product carousel results** are sourced directly from Google Shopping via shopping query fan-outs, compared to just 11% for Bing, according to a recent study by Peec AI researcher Tom Wells published in *Search Engine Land*. The results indicate that brands that rank well in Google Shopping have a significant advantage in appearing in ChatGPT product recommendations as well. The results suggest that ChatGPT's carousel effectively operates as a retrieval pipeline pulling products from roughly the top 40 organic Google Shopping and Bing positions. I think everyone kind of knew that already, but it's interesting to see the data. ___ **Google** will begin enforcing a $5 per day minimum budget for all Demand Gen campaigns starting April 1, aimed at ensuring campaigns generate enough data for its AI to properly optimize during the initial 7 to 14 day “cold start” learning phase. Google said that in most industries, spending less than that amount per day fails to produce enough clicks or conversions to accurately judge whether a campaign works. Advertisers running low-budget tests across many hyper-segmented campaigns will be most affected by the changes. Existing campaigns under the threshold can keep running until any edit is made, at which point Google will require the budget be raised to save changes. ___ **Meta** is updating its ad attribution metrics to more closely align with how other platforms, including Google Analytics, measure performance, including a change to link clicks that will now only count actual clicks through to a website rather than likes, saves, shares, and other engagement actions that have historically inflated the metric. The company is also renaming its “Engaged View” attribution to “Engage-Through Attribution” and shifting non-link click interactions like saves and shares into that category, encouraging advertisers to use this metric to capture the full impact of social interactions. Lastly, Meta is shortening the threshold for what counts as an engaged video view from 10 seconds to 5 seconds, citing data showing that 46% of online purchase conversions from Reels happen within the first 2 seconds of attention on video ads. ___ **Apple** is now blocking iOS users in the United States from downloading ByteDance-owned apps like Douyin, Doubao, and Fanqie Novel, even for Chinese nationals living in the US with a valid Chinese App Store account, according to WIRED. A pop-up window now appears telling users the app is unavailable in their region, with the restriction appearing to apply only to ByteDance-owned apps and not those developed by other Chinese companies. The timing of the block aligns with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which explicitly bars Apple from distributing or updating any app majority-controlled by ByteDance within US borders, though TikTok, CapCut, and Lemon8 remain available under the January divestiture deal. ___ In January, I reported that **Wix** introduced Harmony, a hybrid website builder that combines AI-driven vibe coding with traditional drag-and-drop editing, enabling users to turn natural language prompts into actions, while providing granular, manual control via a traditional visual editor. Well now you can access the Harmony builder directly from ChatGPT via Wix's newly launched app. To begin, users can start a ChatGPT prompt with “@Wix” and the app will automatically surface within the chat to begin the website creation process, which seems wildly unnecessary. Why would anyone want to begin a process on ChatGPT that they'd ultimately have to go to Wix's platform to finish? A modern example of just because you *can* doesn't mean you *should.* ___ **Kroger's newly appointed CEO Greg Foran** said on Thursday's earnings call that the grocery chain's top priorities will be improving its in-store experience and bringing down prices. Foran, who previously served as the CEO of Walmart US, said, “When you combine competitive prices with strong, fresh, and a well-run store, you drive traffic, you grow baskets, and you gain share — that's what I want to accelerate at Kroger. I've spent my career in food retail, and running great stores is how you make that happen.” He also said that in order for Kroger to grow sales more quickly, the company needs to offer customers a compelling reason to shop “by offering great value” — which just so happens to be the name of Walmart's largest private label brand. Looks like you can take the executive out of Walmart, but you can't take the Walmart out of the executive! ___ **Bold Commerce** launched rePete, an AI reorder agent for Shopify stores that predicts when individual customers are running low on a product and sends a personalized nudge to restock with a single click, rather than locking them into a fixed subscription cycle. The tool learns each customer's buying behavior and purchase patterns to generate dynamic reorder predictions and then nudge the shopper to reorder on the communication channel it predicts is most likely to convert. I actually got a sneak peek of the app and it looks very promising. The launch marks Bold Commerce's first new app release in over nine years.  ___ **X** launched a new “Paid Partnership” label that creators can attach to sponsored posts, replacing the platform's previous reliance on #ad hashtags and self-written disclosures. X was the last major platform to not adopt a native paid partnership disclosure tool, with Instagram having added one in 2017 and TikTok in 2022. At the same time, the platform also launched a separate “Made with AI” label,  ___ **In other X news…** the company is promoting itself to potential advertisers with a new deck that emphasizes its commitment to brand safety, according to the leaked deck shared with *Business Insider*. X claims in the deck to have achieved a nearly 100% perfect “brand safe” score using Grok, as measured by IAS and DoubleVerify, and mentions the ways it uses Grok to review posts and users' profiles for brand suitability. The move comes after the platform recently took heat for its AI chatbot sharing deepfake sexualized images of women and children, as X attempts to regain trust with advertisers. ___ **Paramount CEO David Ellison** announced that the company is planning to merge Paramount+ and HBO Max into a unified streaming platform following its acquisition. He also reassured investors that HBO's identify and creative vision would remain unchanged, stating, “Our viewpoint is HBO should stay HBO.” The new combined platform is projected to have over 200M subscribers, which would position it as the number three streaming service behind Netflix, which boasts 301M subscribers, and Amazon Prime Video, which has over 200M subscribers since it's included with Prime membership.  ___ **Amazon** ended its book club program on Sunday to instead “focus on other book discovery features for readers.” Book club admins and members are no longer able to access their clubs or club-related content such as book selections and suggestions. The Book Club feature, which Amazon launched in 2022, had allowed members to use a widget to suggest books to fellow members and to endorse suggestions made by other members. Amazon is instead pushing users to its Goodreads website to engage with other readers. ___ **TikTok** is recruiting US sellers for a new cross-border endeavor called “TikTok Shop US-MX Program” that lets them sell to Mexican customers using their existing US shop credentials, ship directly from US warehouses, and skip the local legal entity and logistics infrastructure that international expansion has historically required. The company is recruiting a select group of sellers for a beta launch running for 9 days later this month. Since launching in the country a year ago, TikTok Shop Mexico has sold over $497M in products, with 128% sales growth between September 2025 and February 2026.  ___ **Amazon**, **Temu**, and **Shein** are reporting significant delivery delays to the Middle East following military strikes on Iran, with the platforms updating their expected delivery windows to as high as 45 days. Freight forwarders have warned e-commerce companies that shipping costs and delivery times could double if disruptions persist in the region. And persist they do! Amazon confirmed that drone strikes hit two data centers in the United Arab Emirates and a third facility in Bahrain, causing structural damage and disrupted power delivery as emergency crews deployed fire suppression systems. The company also closed its fulfillment centers in Abu Dhabi and suspended deliveries across the region. Nvidia closed its Dubai office and transitioned employees to remote work, while WeRide suspended its robotaxi fleet in the city. ___ **In lawsuits this week…** * **Kroger** is being hit with two class action lawsuits alleging that the grocer misclassified its e-commerce manager position as exempt from overtime pay in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act and local wage and hour laws in Colorado and Washington. The lawsuits effectively claim that the role of “e-commerce manager” was just a bullshit name given to product fulfillment roles, titled as such to avoid paying overtime, despite the expectation to work more than 40 hours per week. * **ZhaoCheng Tan** and **Garrett Reid**, investors in Alphabet and Meta, are suing the **Trump administration** for failing to enforce the law that required TikTok to either separate from its Chinese parent company or face a ban in the US. The lawsuit is asking the court to declare that the administration's multiple extensions to forestall the shutdown of TikTok last year were unlawful, as was the deal for new investors to take over TikTok's US operations, as part of its claims that the “illegal” extensions caused a “direct and very real financial harm” to investors of companies that compete with TikTok. * **OpenAI** is being sued by Nippon Life Insurance Co. of America for practicing law without a license. The complaint claims that ChatGPT pushed a woman seeking disability benefits to breach a settlement agreement and file dozens of motions that “serve no legitimate legal or procedural purpose.” OpenAI's usage policies state that people cannot use ChatGPT for legal or medical advice unless a licensed professional is involved, but who the fuck read their terms of service? OpenAI could be found liable for not making that disclosure in their AI generated answers. * **Meta** is being sued for allegedly, but definitely, collecting sensitive content from users with it smart glasses, after nudity and sexual images were viewed by its employees. More on this later. ___ **In corporate shakeups this week…** * **Revolut** appointed former Visa executive Cetin Duransoy as its new CEO for the US and simultaneously applied for a US bank charter. If its applications are approved, the company plans to invest $500M into the US over the next five years, aiming to build a presence in the country that helps it reach its goal of 100M customers globally. * **Alibaba's Qwen AI** division head, Lin Junyang, announced his resignation, becoming the third senior Qwen executive to depart this year. The news was followed by the announced departure of Yu Bowen, who headed post-training for Qwen. * A senior member of **OpenAI's** robotics team, Caitlin Kalinowski, resigned from the company, citing concerns over OpenAI's recent partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense. She wrote, “I resigned from OpenAI. I care deeply about the Robotics team and the work we built together. This wasn't an easy call.” * **TikTok's** global head of business and commercial partnerships, Sofia Hernandez, is leaving the company after six years to take a “deliberate exhale,” according to her LinkedIn post. She wrote, “Choosing to rest is not stepping out of the game. It takes clarity and confidence to step back long enough to recharge your body, reset your thinking, and expand your vision.” * **Beehiiv** hired Darren Chait as its first chief marketing officer to oversee positioning, demand generation, and marketing operations as the company expands beyond its origins as a newsletter publishing tool. Chait formerly served as VP of growth at Calendly, and before that, he co-founded Hugo, a meeting-notes platform. * **Meta** hired the engineers behind the vibe-coding app, Gizmo, which lets people use AI to create and share interactive content like mini-apps or games. The team includes Josh Siegel, Daniel Amitay, Brandon Francis, Rudd Rawcett, and several other ex-Snapchat engineers. ___ **In layoffs this week…** * **Oracle** is planning to cut thousands of jobs and freeze hiring to manage a cash crunch caused by its massive AI data center expansion. The company disclosed a $1.6B restructuring plan in September and expects its free cash flow to turn negative as it builds infrastructure to compete with Amazon and Microsoft. * **Amazon** laid off at least 100 employees in its robotics division responsible for designing warehouse automation systems. The cuts follow the company's recent decision to halt the development of Blue Jay, a multi-arm robotic system designed for smaller spaces. * **Amazon** also fired a warehouse employee who needed surgery to repair two work-related hernias for “non-attendance” while he recuperated at home from the operation. Lashone Brown had been granted official medical leave, but was automatically terminated by Amazon's attendance system five days into his approved two-week recovery period in October. Amazon acknowledged the error, but did not correct it, and now Brown has to sue for damages. * **Flipkart** laid off around 500 employees, roughly 4% of its workforce, following its annual performance review process, which typically results in the company letting go around 1-2% of its employees. The additional layoffs might have to do with the fact that the company is preparing for an IPO later this year. * **Capital One** is letting go of around 1,200 employees at its Chicago offices, bringing its total expected layoffs to almost 1,800 between October 2025 and October 2026. The layoffs, which mostly impact Discover employees, follow Capital One's $35.3B acquisition of the credit card company last year. ___ **OpenAI** began developing an internal code repository alternative to GitHub after recent service outages to the Microsoft owned platform disrupted its software engineers, according to *The Information* sources. Staffers discussed the possibility of selling access to the platform to external customers in conjunction with existing Codex coding agents, though they said the platform likely won't be ready for months if it is to launch. The unreleased project is another example of how OpenAI could directly compete with Microsoft, despite it being one of their biggest and earliest investors and partners. ___ **Kraken** became the first crypto firm to gain direct access to the Federal Reserve core payments system, Fedwire, via its banking arm, Kraken Financial, allowing the platform to move client funds and process payments without relying on traditional banks. The approval, which followed more than five years of regulatory engagement, allows Kraken to settle US dollar transactions on the same rails used by traditional banks, enabling faster and more efficient fiat movement for institutional clients while reducing dependency on correspondent banks. The access is limited in scope, with Kraken not earning interest on reserves or having access to the Fed's emergency lending facilities. ___ **Amazon**, **Claude**, and **TikTok** experienced significant outages last week. Amazon went down for about 5 hours on Thursday, which the company says was a result of code deployment issues. The issue not only impacted Amazon's website and mobile app, but also its pick-up lockers, which customers weren't able to remotely open. **TikTok** experienced an outage in the US that caused content posting lags for creators, caused by an undisclosed issue at an Oracle data center, marking the second major platform failure tied to Oracle infrastructure since the January sale. Lastly, **Anthropic** experienced a widespread service disruption affecting [Claude.ai](http://Claude.ai) and Claude Code, likely driven by an influx of new users after the company shot to the top of the App Store charts following a public dispute with the Trump administration. ___ **Amazon** launched its Amazon Now service in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Tuesday, pledging to delivery groceries and essentials in 15 minutes, with plans to expand to seven other cities this month. The service is free for Prime members and will carry no service fee for an undetermined period, with Amazon partnering with delivery app Rappi to fulfill orders. The move helps position Amazon against MercadoLibre and Shopee in the country. ___ **Amazon India** is expanding its zero referral fee program to cover 125M products under Rs 1,000 ($12 USD), matching similar commission waivers by Flipkart as the two companies aim to better compete with zero-commission platforms like Meesho. In addition to cutting fees, Amazon is also adjusting its logistics costs by reducing Easy Ship fees by over 20% for items priced below Rs 300 ($3.60 USD). The Easy Ship service allows merchants to hold inventory at their own facilities while Amazon manages pickup and delivery. Amazon really wants to win the Indian market! ___ **🏆 This week's most ridiculous story…** An investigation by a Swedish newspaper revealed that Meta is sending videos of people having sex, using the bathroom, undressing, and viewing sensitive financial information to contractors in Kenya, who are viewing the videos as part of their work to train Meta's AI. Contractors told the newspaper that they spent time watching people “going to the toilet, or getting undressed,” often not knowing that they were even recording or being recorded. Good lord, can this company get any worse? Meta defends that it automatically blurs users' faces on collected smart glasses footage, but didn't mention whether it has a policy on blurring vaginas. ___ Plus 22 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including **Avalara** acquiring **Versori**. ___ I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week! PAUL Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

Hi [r/ShopifyeCommerce](https://www.reddit.com/r/ShopifyeCommerce/) \- I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my [Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter](https://www.shopifreaks.com/). Every week for the past 5 years I've posted a summary recap of the week's top stories on this subreddit, which I cover in depth with sources in the full edition. Let's dive in to this week's top e-commerce news... ___ **STAT OF THE WEEK:** Walmart operates more than 1,600+ unique seller names in Google Shopping, each linking back to Walmart-com but registered as a separate seller, according to a Productrise analysis of over 1M product listings. The study notes that Google Merchant Center offers a multi-seller account setup designed to simplify marketplace management, in which individual third-party seller names are not displayed and all products are grouped under the main account's name. However Walmart takes the opposite approach, using individual sub-accounts for each marketplace seller, allowing each seller's name to appear separately in Shopping results, giving it a unique advantage in organic shopping results. ___ **OpenAI** launched a “richer, more visually immersive” shopping experience in ChatGPT that lets users browse products with images, compare options side-by-side with pricing and reviews, and refine results conversationally. The experience is powered by an expansion of its Agentic Commerce Protocol that connects merchant product feeds directly into ChatGPT. Focusing on product discovery is absolutely the right move for OpenAI right now, especially as it looks to grow its advertising business tenfold, as product search and discovery lends itself perfectly to advertising. Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, Lowe's, Best Buy, The Home Depot, and Wayfair have already integrated with ACP for discovery, while Shopify merchants are automatically included through Shopify Catalog with no additional setup required (more on that below). ___ **Shopify** integrated its merchant catalog into ChatGPT, allowing shoppers to discover and purchase products from Shopify stores without leaving the chat. To be clear — this is NOT Instant Checkout, which as you know, OpenAI stepped back from. In fact, I wouldn't even call it “agentic commerce,” although Shopify certainly does. I would define it more as “agentic discovery” with an “embedded checkout experience,” which is great in its own right. In fact, I actually think it's better than Instant Checkout because it allows merchants to have more control over their individual shopping experiences, which is ultimately a win for shoppers too. Alongside the announcement, Shopify made its Agentic plan publicly available, which allows brands not selling on Shopify to add their products to Shopify Catalog and sell across AI channels, which now include ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, AI Mode in Google Search, and the Gemini app. ___ **Meta** announced at Shoptalk 2026 that it will begin testing an AI-driven shopping experience on Facebook and Instagram that surfaces product details, brand information, AI-summarized user reviews, recommended products, and potential discounts in a pop-up after a user clicks an ad. The experience then presents a one-tap checkout built with Stripe and PayPal, with Adyen and Shopify integrations planned. The advertiser is in control of which checkout partner they use. Bloomberg reported earlier this month that Meta was testing a product research experience inside of its chatbot, and it's easy to see how this AI shopping experience could go hand in hand with that. Meta is also expanding its affiliate program for creators, adding Amazon, eBay, and Temu in the U.S., Mercado Libre in Latin America, and Shopee in Asia on Facebook, with Amazon and Shopee affiliates coming to Instagram later this year. ___ **Reddit** launched several new shopping tools to enhance its Dynamic Product Ads experience, which is the catalog-powered advertising solution that it launched one year ago. Updates include Collection Ads, which pair lifestyle hero images with shoppable product thumbnails, Community & Deal Overlays, which are badges that appear on top of product images and display things like "Redditor's Top Pick" or call out discounts, and an alpha Shopify integration, which is designed to simplify product catalog ingestion and pixel installation for merchants. Reddit says that it's seen a 40% YoY increase in the number of high-intent shopping conversations on the platform and that 84% of shoppers feel more secure in their purchases after researching products on the platform — which I can relate to. Nothing inspires more confidence when shopping than a personal product endorsement from “BonerChamp420” and “RonaldDump69”. ___ **Reddit CEO Steve Huffman** also announced that the company will be implementing “human verification” practices and introducing clear labeling for non-human accounts. Huffman made it clear that Reddit doesn't “need or want your identity” and that anonymity is still supported on the platform. They just want to confirm that you're human because “Reddit’s purpose is for people to talk to people.” Moving forward, accounts that use automation in allowed ways (what they call "good bots") will be labeled as "App" so that users know they are interacting with a machine, not a person. ___ **Apple** is introducing paid advertising in **Apple Maps** in the U.S. and Canada this summer, allowing businesses to claim their physical location and appear in ads above organic search results, positioning itself to compete directly with Google Business Listings and local ads. Apple says the ads will maintain the company's existing privacy controls, with user location and ad interaction data staying on-device and not linked to Apple accounts or shared with third parties. ___ **Apple Music** partnered with **Ticketmaster** to integrate live event discovery directly into the app, giving users personalized concert recommendations based on their listening habits through a homepage carousel, dedicated Concerts Tab, Artist Pages, and push notifications for nearby shows. Every event listing now includes a direct link to Ticketmaster for ticket purchases, expanding an existing relationship that already powers event listings across Apple Maps, Spotlight Search, Photos, and Shazam. ___ **TikTok for Business** introduced a new global positioning strategy called “Watch it. Love it. Want it.” to better reflect how businesses are tapping into its platform to build and scale campaigns. Funny enough, OnlyFans could probably adopt an identical slogan, as it works perfectly for both platforms. (RIP Leo Radvinsky.) The announcement notes how the distance between “I saw it” and “I bought it” or “I booked it” is shorter than ever on TikTok because of its integrated ecosystem that can take users from discovery and awareness to interest and action — all without ever leaving the app. ___ Alongside the new positioning, **TikTok** introduced a suite of new ad products designed to help brands tell higher-impact stories, beyond what they could do on television or through standard mobile video ads. Those updates include Logo Takeovers, which allow advertisers to co-brand with TikTok on the logo launch page, Sequential Storytelling Ads, which allow brands to deliver up to three ads to the same user within a designated 15-minute window, Top Reach Format, which allows advertisers to purchase the first ad users see when they open the app, and Pulse Suite UPdates, which align ads with a hand-selected group of creators or with moments when people are already talking about the brand or their product category. Next week's news: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduces new ad format where he'll wear your logo on his shirt and post a picture on Facebook! LOL ___ **Amazon** is testing a new 24/7 delivery service that breaks the day into 10 distinct windows of time spanning 24 hours, according to documents viewed by *Business Insider*. Historically, the company's delivery hours have run from 6am to 10pm. The new system divides the day into overlapping windows, each roughly three hours long, with internal codenames like “Sunrise,” “Coffee,” and “Nightowl.” Maybe they should call the late-night shift “Careful" because this seems like an extremely dangerous value proposition for drivers and a disturbing practice for customers. I personally do not want any delivery vehicles approaching my home during late night or early morning hours, and I can't imagine that I'm alone in feeling that way. However, I could see it working well for dense urban areas and apartment complexes where packages are often delivered to front desks or lockers. ___ **Amazon** is also testing a program that allows shoppers to receive Prime shipping on external merchant websites without logging into an Amazon account. The initiative, codenamed “Confidential Product” in seller invitations, is being piloted by a small group of merchants who use Amazon MCF to fulfill items sold on their websites. Historically, Buy with Prime — the program Amazon launched in 2022 that allows Amazon merchants to sell their products directly from their own websites, while still offering Prime shipping benefits — required customers to login to their Amazon account from the merchant's website, which was a key point of friction for some sellers. Now, Amazon can validate and sync Prime user accounts in the background so that the checkout experience remains completely branded to the merchant. I assume the account validation is based on e-mail address or mailing address, but the *Business Insider* article didn't specify. If I were a merchant invited to participate in this trial, I'd be cautious about what customer information I was sending to Amazon in order to verify their Prime eligibility, and what Amazon is permitted to do with that information. ___ **Shopify** introduced **Tinker**, a free mobile app that consolidates more than 100 AI tools into a single environment where merchants can generate logos, product images, social media videos, and 360-degree product views through conversational prompts. The app brings together models from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and other AI providers into a single app, pulling context from a merchant's previous creations to maintain visual and brand continuity, which you wouldn't get when working across disconnected tools. My first thought was — that sounds like a lot of tokens! This could easily become a very expensive app for Shopify to maintain, which makes me wonder if they plan to monetize it in the future. AI companies already subsidize the cost of their premium models for users, including paid users, and now Shopify is taking that a step further by offering the models completely for free. The offer doesn't seem sustainable, and maybe it's not designed to be. ___ **OpenAI** is expanding its advertising pilot to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in the coming weeks, with plans for “many more markets” later this year, according to an update to a February blog post. The company says that early results are “encouraging” and that it's seen “no impact on consumer trust metrics” and “low dismissal rates of ads” so far in its US pilot, which has crossed the $100M annualized revenue mark within six weeks of launch and now counts more than 600 advertisers. Ads are currently limited to Free and Go subscription tiers, with Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans remaining ad-free. ___ **Amazon** is developing large-format stores under a project called Kobe that combine a Walmart-style supercenter with a robotics-powered fulfillment center embedded in the back, with confirmed locations in Illinois and New Jersey, according to internal documents reviewed by *Business Insider*. The concept stores, which will be over 225k sq.ft. and carry over 250k products, rely on AI tools to help determine what each store should carry and are designed to handle in-store shopping, pickup, and delivery from the same building, with more than 100k sq.ft. dedicated to warehouse space, compared to Walmart's traditional 18k to 36k sq.ft. of warehouse in its supercenters. Amazon's plans for a supercenter store outside of Chicago were made public earlier this year, but now internal documents show that the company is advancing additional sites, while referencing longer-term plans to open dozens of stores, or more, if the early pilots are successful. ___ **USPS** proposed adding an 8% surcharge for fuel and other transportation costs to some of its package delivery options from Apr 26 until Jan 17, 2027 to align its costs of transportation with the market and help it cover the additional costs of doing business. The postal service wrote, “Transportation costs have been increasing, and our competitors have reacted with a number of surcharges. We have steadfastly avoided surcharges and this charge is less than one-third of what our competitors charge for fuel alone, so even with this change, the Postal Service continues to offer great value in shipping with some of the lowest rates in the industrialized world.” The proposal is subject to review by the Postal Regulatory Commission and could potentially lead to the adoption of a permanent policy to have its prices reflect market conditions. ___ **Speaking of the rising cost of gas…** **DoorDash** and **Lyft** have each launched temporary fuel relief programs for their gig workers as national average gas prices have climbed more than 30% over the past month to nearly $4 a gallon, as a result of supply disruptions from the US-Israel war with Iran. DoorDash is offering Dashers 10% cash back on gas via its Crimson Visa Debit Card plus weekly fuel relief payments of $5 to $15 based on miles driven, with eligible drivers saving up to $1.90 per gallon through April 26, while Lyft is offering tiered cash back and Upside savings worth between 23 cents and 98 cents per gallon for drivers through May 26. I support the initiatives by both companies, but retroactive relief programs and cash-back tied to debit card usage still require the drivers to front the money for gas, which I'd imagine may be a struggle for many drivers. Both companies are large enough now to strike deals with national gas brands to help fill driver's tanks without them having to come out of pocket. ___ **FedEx** is launching a same-day shipping program with **OneRail**, a last-mile delivery company that covers nearly 99% of the U.S. and handles 80,000 same-day deliveries per day. The offer promises retailers same-day shipping with two-hour and end-of-day delivery windows and real-time tracking, with retailers able to set their own rates. OneRail CEO Bill Catania said, “This is going to be priced extremely competitively. Retailers and brands \[will be\] able to build a highly compelling value proposition to their customers.” ___ **Google** is transforming its Display & Video 360 demand-side platform from a campaign optimization tool into a full AI-powered media buyer, with Gemini now taking on media planning, automated campaign setup, and real-time CTV inventory management, as well as custom reporting through a new Ads Advisor agent embedded in the Google Ads Console. The company also announced a partnership with Kroger to integrate the retailer's first-party shopper data into YouTube and Google's partner inventory, adding SKU-level reporting so brands can directly measure how ads drive Kroger sales. *Adweek* notes that YouTube was the cornerstone of Google's NewFronts pitch this year and is expected to earn nearly 12% of all CTV ad revenues in 2026. ___ **Pubmatic** is also betting that AI agents can successfully plan, execute, and optimize media campaigns through a new partnership with Untapped Growth, a collective representing 20 independent agencies. The company is deploying its AgenticOS platform, built in collaboration with Nvidia, to replace traditional programmatic campaign workflows with specialized AI agents that handle audience discovery, campaign creation, and optimization without requiring buyers to login into multiple platforms or route through a DSP. Pubmatic's director of sales engineering, Harry Tong, said, “The legacy view of a supply chain within programmatic, where there is a buyer who logs into a DSP who connects to an SSP who connects to publishers on the back end—that supply chain is collapsing. SSP, DSP terms are already a bit obsolete.” One agency testing AgenticOS saw an 82% reduction in buy-side costs and close to a 90% reduction in campaign setup time, according to the company. ___ **Amazon customers** can now return unboxed items for free at more than 1,500 FedEx Office locations nationwide through a renewed partnership between the two companies. The new locations bring the total number of U.S. drop-off points to more than 10,000 and gives 80% of Amazon customers a return location within five miles of home, according to the company. 5 miles? That could be like an hour of driving, depending on where you live. The partnership comes as the two companies remain active rivals, with FedEx announcing same-day delivery services earlier this week and Amazon continuing to build out its own delivery network. ___ **Poshmark** rolled out its first major app refresh in 15 years, introducing an algorithmic “For You” discovery feed, a consolidated seller tools dashboard, and a shift from 1:1 square images to 3:4 portrait images, which sparked immediate backlash from sellers who say the new ratio crops their existing images and requires significant work to redo their images across all their listings. Hasn't Poshmark learned by now that you can't just change the image aspect ratio without any warning to sellers?! The 3:4 aspect ratio was previously tested last year and reversed after similar seller outcry, with Poshmark promising in January to give sellers adequate lead time before reintroducing it, which they didn't do. Liz Morton of *Value Added Resource* reports that threads on r/Poshmark and r/BehindTheClosetDoor are filled with sellers threatening to protest the platform by enabling vacation mode or cross-listing their items on competing platforms like Mercari, eBay, and Depop — which they should likely be doing anyway, as no-one should put all their seller eggs in one basket. ___ **Samsung** and **Amazon** are partnering up to bring interactive video and shoppable content to their televisions, providing a full funnel experience for viewers to watch and ad and take action. The integration will let advertisers activate Samsung TV Plus inventory through Amazon DSP, tapping into Amazon's browsing, streaming, and shopping signals, which are brought together via Amazon Marketing Cloud. Brands selling on Amazon can have Add to Cart functionality, while non-Amazon sellers can utilize actions like Send to Phone or Sign Up. ___ **TikTok Shop** sales from brands with at least $30M in annual revenue increased 97% YoY on the platform, according to the company. TikTok also said it logged more than 103B U.S. searches with e-commerce intent in 2025, total transaction volume rose 80% YoY, and that the number of creators earning commissions through TikTok Shop rose 146% YoY, with the company claiming that it has over 16,000 creators generating over six figures in sales. Large retailers and brands have been embracing TikTok more and more in recent months with Ulta Beauty and Sally Beauty recently joining the platform and PepsiCo launching its first product on TikTok. ___ **Shopify** quietly admitted that for years, removing a payment method from Shop Pay has automatically cancelled all active subscriptions tied to that card across every retailer in the Shopify ecosystem, with no warning to merchants, no cancellation intent signal from the customer, and no save flow to recover the subscriber, as spotted by Victor Castro, General Manager of Happy Viking. Merchants who experienced this type of churn had no way to distinguish customers who wanted to cancel from those who simply updated their payment info, and quite possibly could have cost them a lot of money over the years. Shopify neither offered an apology or recognized the issue itself as a problem, and merely e-mailed merchants about the “quick update” to their subscription business practices. ___ **In lawsuits this week…** * The authors suing **Anthropic** for illegally downloading more than 500k copyrighted works to train Claude filed a motion for final approval of a $1.5B settlement, with qualifying plaintiffs set to receive $3,000 per work. If approved the settlement will be the largest copyright payout in history. * **Meta** and **Google** were found negligent by a Los Angeles jury for designing social media platforms harmful to young people, awarding a plaintiff who said she had become addicted to Instagram and YouTube as a minor a collective $6M. The trial was meant to serve as a test case for the thousands of similar lawsuits consolidated in California state courts. * One day earlier, **Meta** was ordered to pay $375M in civil penalties after a jury in New Mexico found the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangered children. * Washington State Attorney General Nick Brown filed a lawsuit against **Kalshi** for allegedly violating the state's Gambling Act and Consumer Protection Act by allowing residents to bet on elections, Supreme Court cases, wars, and other events, seeking to halt the activity and recovery money lost by residents. The lawsuit is the third active legal challenge Kalshi is facing at the state level, following action by Arizona and Nevada. * **Elon Musk** texted **Mark Zuckerberg** last year to ask if he would be open to jointly bidding on OpenAI's intellectual property before making an unsolicited offer for the company in February 2025, according to newly released court documents, to which Zuckerberg responded, “Want to discuss live?” The case relates to Musk's ongoing lawsuit alleging he was deceived into funding OpenAI as a nonprofit focused on humanity's benefit, only to watch it convert to a for-profit company. * **In other Elon Musk lawsuit news…** A San Francisco federal jury found Musk liable for two statements he made on social media in 2022 claiming Twitter's bot problem made the $44B acquisition untenable, which shareholders claim lowered the stock price so Musk could renegotiate or exit the deal. Damages have not yet been calculated, but could total around $2.5B, covering investors who sold Twitter shares between May 13 and October 4, 2022. Musk will of course appeal. * **Epstein victims** filed a class action lawsuit against **Google** and the **Trump administration** for wrongfully disclosing and publishing personal information about them. The suit says that even after the government acknowledged the mistake and withdrew the information, Google continued to republish it, refusing victim's pleas to take it down. Honestly, Google should just admit no wrong doing and settle the case with a healthy payout for each victim. They certainly deserve it, and Google can afford it. ___ **In corporate shakeups this week…** * **Apple** hired Lilian Rincon, who spent nearly a decade at Google overseeing shopping and assistant products, as VP of product marketing for AI, as the company prepares to release an improved version of Siri rebuilt using Alphabet's Gemini AI. * **Apple** is also reportedly offering restricted stock units worth between $200k and $400k to members of its iPhone Product Design team, with the grants vesting over four years, so that they stick around. OpenAI has already hired more than 40 former Apple employees for its hardware projects. * **ShipMonk** hired Hugh Joiner, a former senior executive at Amazon and Chewy, as its new Chief Technology Officer. * **OpenAI** hired Dave Dugan, a former top advertising executive at Meta, as VP of global ad solutions to lead ad sales at the company as it works to strengthen its ties with major advertisers. * **OpenAI** also appointed Kiran Mani, currently CEO of Indian streaming service JioStar and former Google executive, to a newly created managing director role overseeing its Asia-Pacific operations. * **Google's** top India counsel Bijoya Roy resigned after 16 months in the role, marking the latest in a series of senior departures in the country, with the company also still lacking a government relations head after its head of public policy quit last year. * **X** hired Benji Taylor, the founder of self-custody wallet Family, as its new head of design, as the company prepares to launch X Money in April. * **Meta's** long-time content policy chief Monika Bickert, who oversaw the writing and enforcement of Facebook’s content policies, is leaving the company for a job at Harvard Law School. * **TrueLayer** appointed Stefano De Lollis, a former executive at Satispay and Klarna's Sofort Banking division in Italy, as Head of Ecommerce to lead its e-commerce strategy. * **Sam Altman** stepped down from the board of Helion Energy, the fusion startup he has backed since 2015, saying the dual roles became untenable as OpenAI begins exploring a significant partnership with the company, though he will retain a financial interest in Helion. LOL, didn't Altman used to brag about how he owns no equity in OpenAI to avoid conflicts of interest? So instead he uses his position at the company to enrich himself through his other ventures? * Ross Nordeen, the last of **xAI's** original 11 cofounders, has exited the company, following a months-long exodus of other founders. Musk acknowledged the disruption, saying xAI “was not built right first time around” and is now rebuilding, actively recruiting new talent including two senior hires from Cursor. ___ **In hirings and firings this week…** * **X** let go of chief marketing officer Angela Zepeda and more than 20 nontechnical staff in marketing and other departments over the past several weeks, eliminating roles deemed redundant following the company's merger with xAI last year and xAI's subsequent merger with SpaceX in early February. * **Epic Games** is laying off over 1,000 employees, citing a Fortnite engagement downturn that began in 2025 and left the company spending significantly more than it earns. The company also announced plans to cut over $500M in costs, primarily through reductions in contractor spending and marketing. * **Meta** is cutting a few hundred employees across Reality Labs, its social media divisions, recruiting operations, and sales, following a separate round of 1,500 Reality Labs layoffs in January. *Reuters* reported earlier this month that Meta could cut at least 20% of total headcount this year, though a company spokesperson called the report “speculative reporting about theoretical approaches.” * **Solaris**, a German embedded finance platform, is cutting 80 roles, about 20% of its 400-person workforce, as part of a restructuring to transform into an “AI-native bank” where AI agents handle operational processes and humans focus on control and governance. * **Revolut** plans to expand its India global capability center to 5,500 employees by end of 2026, adding 1,600 new roles spanning product development, payment processing, and fraud investigations, as part of a £500M five-year commitment to its India operations. The expansion would bring roughly 40% of Revolut's global workforce to India, where about a third of the company's processes already run ___ **OpenAI** is pulling the plug on its Sora video platform, which it launched last September, discontinuing both the consumer app and developer API and removing video functionality from ChatGPT, as Sam Altman redirects computing resources and talent toward productivity, coding, and agentic tools. The shutdown also effectively kills a $1B Disney deal announced in December, under which OpenAI was set to license more than 200 characters for AI-generated video content, though Disney says it “respects OpenAI's decision to exit the video generation business.” I remember when Disney sent Google a cease-and-desist letter for infringing on its IP with its video and photo AI-generation models, around the same time that it struck a deal with OpenAI. It'd be funny if now Disney came back to Google and was like, “Actually we were thinking…” ___ **Google** is rolling out two new tools for Gemini that allow users to import memories and full chat history from other AI apps, letting them carry over personal context such as preferences, relationships, and past conversations rather than rebuilding them from scratch. The memory import feature works by prompting users to copy a generated summary from their current AI app and paste it into Gemini, while the chat history tool accepts a ZIP file upload of prior conversation threads that can then be searched and continued inside Gemini. Google is also renaming its “past chats” feature to “memory” in the coming weeks, demonstrating how important chat history and conversation continuity has become to its AI assistant strategy. I do imagine that interoperability will become the standard amongst AI firms, or at least I'd like to imagine so, as it provides an equal benefit to every company, and is the best move for users. ___ **Amazon** is deploying AI agents to automate work across its sales, business development, and technical specialist teams following layoffs of hundreds of employees between October 2025 and January 2026. The agents include a technical specialist agent that aggregates knowledge across cybersecurity, networking, and other domains, and a partner coordination agent that handles tasks like updating customer records and vetting sales leads. The company says AI was not the primary reason for the cuts, which it attributed to reducing management layers and bureaucracy, but current and former employees say the automation efforts appear directly aimed at backfilling work in groups hit hardest by the reductions. ___ **A federal judge in California** indefinitely blocked the Pentagon's effort to punish **Anthropic** by labeling it a supply chain risk and attempting to sever contracts with the country. US District Judge Rita Lin wrote, “Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government,” making it clear in her ruling that the Trump administration's actions violated Anthropic's First Amendment and due process rights. Big win for American tech companies! Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is currently drafting legislation to prohibit the military from using AI for fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, which started the whole kerfuffle after Anthropic refused to allow such uses of its models. ___ **The European Union** agreed to overhaul its customs system, aiming to coordinate collection of duties and safety checks across countries as it struggles to manage the high volume of low-value e-commerce parcels entering the region each year. Moving forward, online platforms like Shein, Temu, and AliExpress that ship direct from China will be responsible for duties and product safety compliance, with fines for repeat violations ranging from 1% to 6% of the total value of goods imported into the EU in the prior 12 months. The reforms also scrap the existing duty exemption on parcels valued under €150 and replace it with an interim €3 handling fee per product category from July onwards, followed by an additional undisclosed fee from November 1. Last year the EU received 5.8B low-value parcels from China, and a European Commission study found that up to 65% of imported cosmetics and personal protective equipment did not comply with EU safety rules. ___ **Meta** issued stock options to six senior executives that require the company's share price to rise as much as 88% to over $1,100 to unlock the lowest tranche, and as high as $3,727 for the most aggressive tranche, which would push Meta's market cap above $9 trillion. The options cover CFO Susan Li, technology head Andrew Bosworth, product chief Chris Cox, operations boss Javier Olivan, President Dina Powell McCormick, and Chief Legal Officer C.J. Mahoney, but notably does not include CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and must hit their price targets by February 14, 2028 to vest. Good luck with that one! Tesla recently offered similar options to Elon Musk that would pay out around $1 trillion if certain operational targets are hit. ___ **Amazon** paid more than $120M to **Windwave Communications**, a small rural Oregon fiber-optic provider, between 2015 and 2022, while simultaneously negotiating tax breaks and land deals with local public officials who secretly owned the company, ultimately saving Amazon more than $435M in taxes. The officials had purchased Windwave from the nonprofit they ran for $2.6M using projections that assumed just 2% annual revenue growth, while Amazon's payments to the company were already increasing thirtyfold between 2015 and 2021. The Oregon Department of Justice has filed civil charges against five buyers and three Inland board members, alleging the low valuation “was a fabrication,” while Amazon itself has been subpoenaed for documents about what it knew regarding Windwave's ownership, though the company has not been charged and maintains it acted appropriately. I'd imagine investigators would find a very large ball of yarn if they started pulling at threads like this within Amazon, and I certainly hope they do. ___ **The US Army** launched an Unmanned Aircraft Systems Marketplace built with Amazon Web Services that lets Army units, government partners, and allied nations browse, compare, and order vetted drone systems in one place, aiming to combat the Pentagon's notoriously slow and costly traditional procurement process. The storefront is designed to broaden the defense industrial base beyond the handful of giant contractors that currently dominate it and lower barriers for smaller innovators to compete for military contracts — such as Jonah Hill and Miles Teller. The launch comes as drone warfare has fundamentally reshaped the battlefield, with Ukraine producing an estimated 7M drones per year and deploying up to 10,000 per day. *“Thanks for shopping on UAS Marketplace! It's time to review your drone purchase…”* ___ **🏆 This week's most ridiculous story…** Mark Zuckerberg is building an AI agent to help him perform his job as CEO, according to *Wall Street Journal* sources. The plan is for everyone working at Meta to have their own personal AI agent, starting with himself. Could Zuckerberg perhaps build some ethics and morality into his agent? That would help compensate for his current operating system's lack of either. Employees across the company said they have been encouraged to attend AI tutorial meetings several times a week, frequent AI hackathons, and create their own AI tools to speed up their work, with some calling the era at Meta fun and empowering and others saying the rapid change and intense focus on the use of AI has furthered anxiety about potential layoffs. ___ Plus 26 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including **OpenAI** raising an additional $10B, bringing its round total to a record $120B. ___ I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week! PAUL Editor of Shopifreaks E-Commerce Newsletter PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

Our platform aggregates and organizes all relevant market news, helping you stay informed, up-to-date, and knowledgeable without spending hours sifting through headlines. Reinvented to keep you in control, it's where your edge begins with better information. Go from market noise to clarity in seconds with a real-time platform built to redefine how traders and investors digest financial news. Visit [www.marketflux.io](http://www.marketflux.io/) # Here is Your Complete Market Rundown (03/24/2026): # Company News # [Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com), Inc. (AMZN) # Performance Overview 1D Change:  -1.46% 5D Change:  -3.7% News Volume:  182 Unusual Volume Factor:  2x # Amazon Faces AWS Disruption in Bahrain, Acquires Humanoid Robotics Startup, as Anthropic Battles Pentagon Designation Amazon Web Services confirmed its Bahrain region experienced service disruptions due to drone activity amid ongoing Middle East conflict, marking the second such incident in a month. The company stated it is working with local authorities and helping affected customers migrate to alternate AWS regions. Despite the operational challenges, Amazon's stock showed minimal reaction to the geopolitical impact. In a significant strategic move, Amazon acquired New York-based Fauna Robotics, entering the consumer humanoid robotics market and joining other tech giants in this emerging sector. Separately, the company's autonomous vehicle subsidiary Zoox announced plans to expand its robotaxi operations to Austin and Miami later this year, while increasing its fleet to 100 vehicles in San Francisco and Las Vegas as it awaits regulatory approval for paid rides. On the AI front, reports emerged that AWS is developing internal AI agents to automate sales and business development functions following recent staff cuts. The news contributed to broader pressure on software stocks, as investors weighed the potential disruption to traditional SaaS business models. Amazon-backed Anthropic found itself in federal court in San Francisco, challenging the Pentagon's designation of the AI company as a "national security supply chain risk." The judge indicated the government's actions appeared aimed at crippling the company, in what experts called the first major clash between AI firms and government oversight. Anthropic also launched new automation features for its Claude AI assistant, including an "Auto Mode" that can execute computer tasks with built-in safety guardrails. In competitive developments, FedEx launched same-day delivery service through a partnership with OneRail, directly challenging Amazon and Walmart's accelerating delivery speeds. Meanwhile, EU antitrust officials met with CEOs from Amazon, Google, Meta, and OpenAI amid heightened scrutiny of AI industry practices. Reports also surfaced that Amazon is planning a smartphone comeback more than a decade after its Fire Phone failure, though details remain limited. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/EAAACGn9WO0AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwllpe2hydUiQpqwSqJ-INV_5wAjVbc/1/x7_e8DjTqLZQzvQwJ0EhsQ/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0Lzk5ZTAwNmE0MDcyZjUxNDgwZGY0NTZhOWMwNzllNjQ1) # Jpmorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) # Performance Overview 1D Change:  0.83% 5D Change:  1.95% News Volume:  217 Unusual Volume Factor:  2x # JPMorgan Warns Aging Power Grids Pose National Security Risk as Dimon Sees Long-Term Peace Potential in Iran Conflict JPMorgan Chase issued a stark warning that outdated electricity infrastructure has become a national security threat, citing vulnerabilities to extreme weather, cyberattacks, and energy shocks. The bank highlighted surging demand from artificial intelligence, electrification, and industrial growth as compounding factors straining aging grid networks. In a separate development, CEO Jamie Dimon offered cautiously optimistic commentary on the Iran conflict, suggesting that while the war presents near-term risks, it could ultimately lead to lasting peace in the Middle East. Dimon also expressed deep frustration with current American policies and noted that government incentives could help mitigate potential job losses from AI adoption. On the analyst front, JPMorgan made several notable rating changes. The firm downgraded SAP to Neutral as cloud backlog growth showed signs of slowing, causing shares to dip. The bank also cut Tyson Foods' price target due to beef margin concerns and downgraded Xencor to Neutral on execution worries. Fair Isaac saw its price target reduced over pricing concerns. Conversely, JPMorgan upgraded Ecolab following a selloff related to Middle East tensions and raised price targets for several agricultural stocks, including Bunge to $134, Archer Daniels Midland to $65, and Sunoco to $73. The firm also sees 140% upside potential in eVTOL manufacturer Eve Holding. In legal news, President Trump argued to keep his $5 billion "debanking" lawsuit against JPMorgan in Florida state court, claiming Dimon personally directed the closure of his accounts. The bank's various ETFs declared quarterly distributions, while regulatory developments brought a major win for large banks that could free up tens of billions in capital. JPMorgan's asset management division continued routine portfolio adjustments across numerous holdings. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/EAAACGn9WO0AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwllpe2hydUiQpqwSqJ-INV_5wAjVbc/2/lff9Y0DV5u3uD39AfM1Iag/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzY0OWNjZmZhMWU1ZWI5NzdjYmFlYzliNjZhYzM5YjUx) # Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) # Performance Overview 1D Change:  0.58% 5D Change:  -4.07% News Volume:  106 Unusual Volume Factor:  1x # Tesla European Sales Rebound After Year-Long Decline as Musk Announces Major Chip Manufacturing Expansion Tesla's European sales rose 11.8% in February, marking the company's first monthly growth in the region since 2024 and ending a year-long sales slump. The automaker captured 1.8% market share in the EU, Britain, and EFTA markets, matching Chinese competitor BYD's share. Overall European car registrations increased modestly by 1.7% in February, though the January-February period showed a 1.2% decline to 1.66 million vehicles. The sales recovery comes as Tesla faces intensifying competition from BYD, whose European registrations surged 185% in February. Analysts noted the European rebound provided mixed signals for Tesla's global position, with some characterizing it as finally catching a break in a challenging market. In a significant strategic announcement, Elon Musk revealed plans for Tesla and SpaceX to jointly construct an advanced chip manufacturing facility in Austin, dubbed "Terafab." The project aims to achieve one terawatt of production capacity through two separate fabrication plants—one dedicated to Tesla's AI applications for vehicles and robots, and another for SpaceX's space-based data centers. Wedbush analysts estimate the joint venture with xAI and SpaceX could require $20-25 billion in investment and view it as critical to Tesla's AI strategy and a potential precursor to a 2027 Tesla-SpaceX merger. However, investor Gary Black warned that a Tesla-SpaceX merger could reduce Tesla's valuation by 25%, while skeptics questioned potential delays and execution risks. Musk defended the chip manufacturing bet as essential to meeting soaring AI demand. In other developments, the Tesla Cybertruck received the highest safety rating from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Analysts offered mixed commentary on Tesla's competitive position, with some comparing rival XPeng favorably to Tesla and noting Amazon's Zoox robotaxi expansion into San Francisco and Las Vegas as potential competitive pressure. Jefferies analysts suggested Tesla's solar plans could pressure First Solar's stock, while Daiwa upgraded JinkoSolar based on Tesla patent revenue outlook. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/EAAACGn9WO0AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwllpe2hydUiQpqwSqJ-INV_5wAjVbc/3/RoiIXkNJ-9LaZIF3ahktgA/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzA3NGMzNGYyYmJjYjUzMGRlNzI2Y2MxMTMxY2FiZmYz) # Alphabet Inc. (GOOG) # Performance Overview 1D Change:  -3.41% 5D Change:  -6.59% # Google Faces Legal Uncertainty as Social Media Trial Jury Deadlocks While Expanding AI and Cloud Partnerships Alphabet's fate in a major social media addiction trial remains uncertain as the jury signaled a deadlock in proceedings involving both Google and Meta. The case represents a significant legal challenge for the tech giant as it navigates regulatory scrutiny. In a separate development, EU antitrust chief met with CEOs from Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Amazon amid heightened scrutiny of AI practices, underscoring the regulatory pressure facing major technology companies. On the business front, Google announced several strategic partnerships and product launches. Bank of Montreal became the first financial institution to join CME Group's tokenized cash platform built on Google Cloud infrastructure, enabling 24/7 settlement of derivatives and margin products. Baker Hughes partnered with Google Cloud to develop AI-powered data center solutions, while Gap became the first major fashion retailer to integrate checkout functionality directly within Google's Gemini AI assistant. Google expanded its robotics capabilities through a partnership with Agile Robots, leveraging DeepMind technology. The company also unveiled three new Gemini features for Google TV and announced it is open-sourcing Android Auto OS for software-defined vehicle platforms. In personnel news, former Google executive Matt Brittin was appointed director-general of the BBC, marking a significant leadership transition for the British broadcaster. Alphabet shares showed mixed premarket trading, down 0.3 percent, while several institutional investors adjusted their positions in the company. Analysts maintained bullish views on the stock, with Benchmark reaffirming its rating following news of Google DV360 integration with Roku. The company also faced competitive pressure as Apple announced plans to introduce Google-style advertising to its Maps platform, and Amazon expanded its Zoox robotaxi service to Austin and Miami to challenge Google's Waymo division. OpenAI reportedly eyes entering the digital advertising market currently dominated by Google and Meta. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/EAAACGn9WO0AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwllpe2hydUiQpqwSqJ-INV_5wAjVbc/4/ab72HqkMlyffRksr0JnTEw/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0L2MxOTk1OWIzMmNlMDI0Zjg5NzI1OTJhMTdhZTJiYTJj) # Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR) # Performance Overview 1D Change:  -3.74% 5D Change:  -0.19% # Palantir Stock Tumbles 5% Amid Tech Selloff and Middle East Tensions Despite UK Contract Win Palantir Technologies shares declined sharply Tuesday, falling approximately 5% as broader tech sector weakness and escalating Middle East tensions weighed on markets. The stock retreated after approaching a technical breakout earlier in the week, with analysts questioning whether the selloff represents an unfair punishment given the company's fundamentals. Britain's Financial Conduct Authority defended its contract award to Palantir before lawmakers, providing a positive development for the company's international expansion. The UK deal contributed to earlier gains that saw Palantir outperform the Magnificent 7 stocks by 22%. Institutional investors showed mixed activity, with Congress Asset Management and BDF Gestion increasing positions while Rep. Thomas Suozzi unloaded shares. Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar characterized the Iran conflict as the first major war where artificial intelligence plays a central role, underscoring the company's defense sector relevance. CEO Alex Karp made headlines for purchasing a $46 million Miami mansion following his $120 million Colorado monastery acquisition. Despite the day's decline, some analysts view the selloff as a buying opportunity, citing accelerating AI-driven growth and deepening Pentagon relationships. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/EAAACGn9WO0AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwllpe2hydUiQpqwSqJ-INV_5wAjVbc/5/BL8G623ipC4kHqtaAPXIqQ/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0L2U3MGE2YTgzNWFkNDg2MDM2NDdlYmM2NzZmMmJlOWJm) # Servicenow, Inc. (NOW) # Performance Overview 1D Change:  -5.64% 5D Change:  -10.34% # ServiceNow Stock Falls 5% Despite Vonage Partnership Expansion and Institutional Buying Activity ServiceNow shares drifted lower Tuesday, declining 5% alongside Salesforce amid broader market concerns. The drop occurred despite positive developments, including an expanded partnership with Ericsson's Vonage to integrate Contact Center capabilities with ServiceNow Voice, embedding AI features into enterprise workflows. Separately, Zenity announced a partnership with ServiceNow to operationalize AI agent risk reduction in security operations. Institutional investors showed continued confidence, with multiple firms including Diversified Trust, Fulton Bank, and Congress Asset Management increasing their holdings. Wall Street maintains bullish views on the stock, though analysts questioned whether the market is mispricing ServiceNow and Salesforce following the decline. The company also received favorable coverage noting smart money accumulation while retail investors sold technology stocks. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/EAAACGn9WO0AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwllpe2hydUiQpqwSqJ-INV_5wAjVbc/6/JQ0degaHnQzIA1kLXmHDBA/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0Lzc2NjRmYTY0Yjg3YTZlYjI4ZWMzNjU4ZjE2NWEwNmNl) # Environment Events # US Envoys Witkoff and Kushner Broker One-Month Iran Ceasefire Framework Israeli Channel 12 reports US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are developing a one-month ceasefire mechanism with Iran, mirroring Gaza understandings. The framework includes negotiations on a 15-point plan during the ceasefire period. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/28/pajfRIbBWdN7twtCxYHmBg/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzhkM2ZmMzY4ZGIyZmZiMTg5YTMwMzA1MDdhMTliNzA5) # Oil And Gas Events # Oil Surges Past $100 as Iran Denies Peace Talks; Japan Considers Market Intervention Brent crude crossed $100 per barrel Tuesday after Iran denied engaging in U.S. peace talks to end the Gulf conflict, intensifying supply concerns. Markets whipsawed as President Trump postponed bombing Iran's power grid, temporarily easing fears of deeper energy disruption. Goldman Sachs raised oil price forecasts, while Fitch warned that sustained prices averaging $100 in 2026 could pressure APAC sovereign ratings. A major fire at one of the largest U.S. refineries added to supply worries. Japan's Finance Ministry reportedly explored potential intervention in crude futures markets as the nation's petrochemical industry aggressively procures naphtha despite high costs. The Japan Petrochemical Industry Association said supplies face no imminent shortage but is monitoring Persian Gulf tensions closely. Asian stocks rallied despite oil volatility, with executives at Houston's energy conference expressing uncertainty about resolution prospects. Indian refiners including HPCL, BPCL, and IOC drew investor focus as oil eased from recent peaks. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/1/DBWVmLO98M0mxxPNVjyRdA/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzJlMWUyMTU5ZDgwMDU5ZTIwM2UwNjUyYTU4YzNiYjVi) # Oil stocks surge as Iran disputes Trump ceasefire claims, markets whipsaw on conflicting signals Energy shares rallied after Iranian media contradicted President Trump's assertion of ongoing U.S.-Iran negotiations. Markets experienced volatility as the Middle East conflict entered its 25th day with no signs of de-escalation between Iran and Israel. Traders placed $500 million in oil bets before Trump's post about delaying an Iran attack. Trump's approval rating fell to 36% as fuel prices climbed amid the ongoing crisis. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/2/vb5097dORbquNsiCSAEVIg/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzM5MTc1YWYzMzZkNDNiZDRjYmFjNTY1NjViYWVmN2My) # Iran Halts Natural Gas Exports to Turkey After Israeli Strike on South Pars Field Iran has stopped natural gas exports to Turkey following an Israeli strike on the South Pars gas field last week. The halt affects the pipeline connecting the two countries after the attack on Iran's giant gas facility. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/3/7nHwKGFN9PcNXfDZyxlCNw/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0L2ZhODJlZGMzNWFkYTEzNTE2ZmZmYWM2MzA5YjY0YmZk) # Kuwait Oil CEO Condemns Iran as Energy Sector Hits Record High Amid Gulf Tensions Kuwait Petroleum's CEO accused Iran of holding the global economy hostage as Gulf states reduce oil production following Iranian attacks. Kuwait's recovery timeline extends 3-4 months. Energy sector reached its 23rd all-time high this year, with traders wagering $500 million on oil prices before Trump's Iran attack delay announcement. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/4/koeILzT7rDLLdgz9bjjN4Q/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0Lzc2MjYxYTQyMTU5MmU1ZmE2ZTY2MWI1OGZmNTU4ZTdl) # Geopolitics Events # Trump Declares Victory Over Iran, Announces Nuclear Deal and Major Energy Concession President Trump announced Tuesday that the US has achieved what he characterized as regime change in Iran and secured major concessions from Tehran. Trump stated Iran has agreed to never possess nuclear weapons and provided a "significant prize worth tremendous amount of money" related to oil, gas, and the Strait of Hormuz waterway. The president said Secretary of State Rubio and Vice President Vance are leading negotiations with Iran's new leadership, whom he described as entirely different from previous officials. Trump declared "we've won this war" and said Iran is "talking sense" and eager to make a deal, though he cautioned he cannot guarantee the conflict will end. He cited US military freedom over Tehran and Iranian cooperation on Hormuz transit as evidence of America's dominant bargaining position. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/7/4SfMsu2dx3Tuajmb1CHIFg/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzZlN2RiNDBmYmFlNjRkN2Y0MzdjMzc2ODQ2M2Y0Mzk0) # Trump Says Iran Seeks Deal as Negotiations Progress President Trump stated the U.S. and Iran are currently negotiating, with Iran offering a goodwill gesture and expressing desire to reach an agreement on war resolution. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/8/-9_rwHIHdvrTJXRFMw51zg/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0L2QzODdjZDgzNTU3ODgyYjc4YmVlMGRiNmM5OGU3ZjYz) # Saudi Crown Prince Pushes Trump to Escalate Iran Campaign Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman urged President Trump to continue the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran in recent calls, calling it a "historic opportunity," according to the New York Times. Saudi Arabia believes removing Iran's regime would eliminate long-term Gulf threats, though Trump has signaled mixed positions on escalation versus potential peace talks. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/9/7ZT8tsqUenenpvDOxxxK8w/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzNjOWQwZGYxNTliYjI2YjYwZWQ5MjE1MDJjY2NjYjQ5) # Senate Democrats Reject GOP Homeland Security Funding Offer, Counter With ICE Reform Proposal Senate Minority Leader Schumer rejected a Republican offer to reopen the Department of Homeland Security and partially fund ICE, instead sending a counteroffer that includes ICE reforms. The standoff has caused TSA staffing shortages and airport security delays. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/10/RYZnF_khAcmt9xiY8MoFbw/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzYwOGNiYjY2YzQ3ZGJhNzdiYjYzMTQzNzA3NTM2YzRj) # US Sends Iran 15-Point Plan to End Mideast Conflict The United States has transmitted a 15-point proposal to Iran aimed at ending the ongoing war, according to the New York Times, with President Trump confirming active negotiations are underway. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/11/-OVsJH97ag8vJ8RShfiiJw/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0L2E5NGJjNjNjNTUwNmU4NmVlOWE3OGRkNGFmNzczMGRk) # US Deploys Combat Brigade as Iran Controls Strait of Hormuz Amid Escalating Regional Conflict The United States plans to deploy a brigade combat team to support Iran operations, with a written order expected within hours, according to the Wall Street Journal. Officials emphasized no decision has been made to put boots on the ground in Iran, though the 82nd Airborne's movement could enable operations to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or seize strategic Iranian territory. Iran has tightened control over the Strait of Hormuz, turning back container ships lacking proper transit permission and requiring full coordination with Iranian maritime authorities. However, Iran granted safe passage to a Thai tanker, stating friends will not be forgotten. An Iranian source told CNN that outreach has occurred between Washington and Tehran, with Iran willing to listen to sustainable proposals to end the conflict, though not requesting direct talks. China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged early peace talks with his Iranian counterpart. The conflict has caused serious economic fallout, according to Turkish President Erdogan, who is working to establish peace. Lebanon reports over 1,070 killed since the war began. Israel is investigating why its Air Force failed to intercept an Iranian ballistic missile that struck Tel Aviv. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/18/OxZNDyofHPSxCq7TqyEbIQ/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzY1MzkwMjFjYTEyYWUzNWY3ZmQxZmU4MmNiM2U0ZWU1) # Iran Restricts Strait of Hormuz Access to "Non-Hostile" Vessels Only Iran has notified International Maritime Organization members that only "non-hostile" ships coordinating with Iranian authorities may transit the Strait of Hormuz. Approximately 3,200 vessels remain stranded in the Gulf, with at least 22 ships struck since hostilities began, according to the Financial Times. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/19/uZjheUx0S1NZsz7lQHmmsw/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0L2MxZTk1YTA1ZjJiOTBhNDk4YmNhMTljYWNiNWFjMjcx) # Technology Events # Arm Holdings Enters Chip Manufacturing While AI Infrastructure Faces Memory Constraints Arm Holdings announced its first foray into silicon production with the Arm AGI CPU, a data center processor designed for agentic AI infrastructure with Meta as lead partner. The company projects the move will add billions in annual revenue. Meanwhile, OpenAI executives identified memory shortages as a critical bottleneck threatening AI development, echoing broader industry concerns about semiconductor constraints. Nvidia received positive analyst attention citing potential 35X performance gains, while Oracle earned a Buy rating from Bank of America for its AI infrastructure investments. Software stocks faced pressure amid increased AI automation competition, and CoreWeave shares declined 50% from recent highs. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/12/MTBFFCzeBqf55lkW7AxecQ/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzRjYjQ0ZjllYTkzMzgzZTkyZDY3YmQyY2VjZjFlZTc3) # OpenAI to Discontinue Sora Video App After Six Months OpenAI plans to shut down its Sora video generation platform as part of a strategic shift toward business and coding functions ahead of a potential IPO targeted for Q4 2026. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/13/rv1kg4J_whkNvvvMj7Vpyw/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzY0YmM1NjNkMGYyZDMxYjc4ZmJlOTI3Y2E2NGQ1Y2Rk) # Meta Names CTO Bosworth to Lead AI-Native Transformation Meta Platforms appointed Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth to oversee the company's initiative to become AI-native, according to the Wall Street Journal. Bosworth will lead development of AI tools for internal use as Meta pursues broader artificial intelligence integration across its operations. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/14/GqmMKtcAgWxUn7JgUxHxBQ/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzJiY2RmYzMyZjhkNmM3M2ExOTNhNTAxOGYxOTY1Zjkw) # AI Sector Shows Mixed Signals as Infrastructure Concerns Mount Amid OpenAI Valuation Questions Artificial Superintelligence Alliance surged 16% with analysts eyeing $0.30 for FET token. OpenAI reached 900 million users and $840 billion valuation despite uncertain financial outlook. Infrastructure challenges emerged as war-related helium shortages exposed chip supply vulnerabilities. Celestica identified shifting AI bottlenecks overlooked by markets, while Palo Alto Networks positioned platform strength against AI disruption risks. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/15/jXe4z3PpWbLmCvv5NZaAeg/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0L2MzZmYwZjZjYzIwNTk5MDljZjZkNmFiYzI1YjE0NzIz) # Apple Tests Standalone Siri App in Major AI Overhaul Apple is developing a standalone Siri application and new "Ask Siri" feature as part of a significant AI overhaul, according to Bloomberg. The redesigned assistant will feature a fresh interface and chatbot-like experience, working across the company's software ecosystem. Apple plans to unveil these changes on June 8 at its Worldwide Developers Conference as part of iOS 27 and macOS 27, aiming to make Siri more conversational and capable across devices. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/16/ECB4QrLSn4wvBLrK98z2MA/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzZiMzM3MGUxY2JhMWU5YWU2YjJjN2VmMWFiOGE4NDUw) # OpenAI Nears $10B Funding Deal, Pushing Total Round to $120B at $730B Valuation OpenAI is finalizing a $10 billion investment from MGX, Coatue, and Thrive Capital, bringing its latest funding round to approximately $120 billion total. The deal values the artificial intelligence company at roughly $730 billion pre-money valuation. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/17/qpmph3UuBQ_Q8Zb9W_7u9w/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0Lzk4YzM5OWY2YWU5NjJiMTIzNTY0MjczOGY5OTg2YzFl) # Fixed Income And Interest Rates Events # Treasury Yields Surge as $69 Billion Two-Year Note Auction Draws Weak Demand Treasury yields jumped after a poorly received $69 billion two-year note auction, with the final yield of 3.936% coming two basis points above pre-auction market levels, signaling weak investor demand and extending the broader decline in Treasury prices. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/21/-DFX6pkjfz_CK6KNSFDBQA/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzMwMTMyMjQ2NjkxNzcxZjU0NTNhYjIyMTViOWRkNTRl) # Crypto Events # NYSE Partners With Securitize to Launch 24/7 Blockchain-Based Stock Trading Platform The New York Stock Exchange is partnering with Securitize to develop a tokenized securities platform that will enable round-the-clock stock trading on blockchain infrastructure, moving traditional equities onto distributed ledger technology. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/20/Tflm_o8WSM99SN3edEm-Ug/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzY5MDk5ODJlNDI5YWUzYTc3ODc1MTRiMTk4ZWI3YmZk) # Circle Internet Stock Plunges 18-20% on Stablecoin Yield Restrictions Circle Internet shares tumbled nearly 20% following reports that a draft of the CLARITY Act would impose strict limitations on stablecoin yields, raising concerns about the company's business model. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/22/vw3ehmxZAs4GNO9Cjsmk3w/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0Lzc3NWE0NmVjZDNlYjliMjNmYTA1NjEwYzhlMTEyMGZm) # Bitcoin Tests $70,000 Support as Bernstein Calls Bottom, Crypto Stocks Tumble Bitcoin slipped below $70,000 amid broader crypto stock weakness, with Circle declining 16%. Bernstein analysts suggest the token has bottomed and upside lies ahead despite current volatility. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/23/yPmtx_kBVhuXAYo8lSbvFQ/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzkyNGU2ZDEzMWU5MWNlZTljZDM1ZDg1ZDBiNjlhZDVi) # Corporate Actions Events # Robinhood Authorizes $1.5 Billion Share Buyback Program Robinhood Markets approved a $1.5 billion stock repurchase program and expanded its credit facility to $3.25 billion, despite recent share price weakness following an 80% gain over the past year. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/24/26CGDlFmLXtDazDhX4ex4Q/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzliNDY5MTQ4ZmZmZWJiY2U2ODdkMzVhNmU0MTBkNDNi) # OpenAI Nears $10B Funding Deal, Pushing Total Round to $120B at $730B Valuation OpenAI is finalizing a $10 billion investment from MGX, Coatue, and Thrive Capital, bringing its latest funding round to approximately $120 billion total. The deal values the artificial intelligence company at roughly $730 billion pre-money valuation. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/25/Ud7YrU77ZA6GIh06sY-7UA/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0Lzk4YzM5OWY2YWU5NjJiMTIzNTY0MjczOGY5OTg2YzFl) # Victory Capital Withdraws from Janus Henderson Acquisition Bid Victory Capital has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Janus Henderson, ending the bidding war and positioning Trian and General Catalyst as likely winners. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/26/TLNMDAKOVr92BAxpALdvQQ/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0LzU0MGU2M2ZkNTdkY2MzNWZhYWZiOGM3YWJiNzk3NWJm) # Healthcare Events # ImmunityBio Shares Plunge Following FDA Warning on Anktiva Marketing ImmunityBio stock tumbled after the FDA issued a warning letter to the biotechnology company and billionaire Executive Chairman Patrick Soon-Shiong for false and misleading promotion of bladder cancer drug Anktiva. [Continue reading](https://sxyvh.mjt.lu/lnk/CAAACGeT3W8AAAAAAAAAANdLVigAAAACUTQAAAAAACXiCwBpwwqUb_hkkLwjSuuq4K7Mn8NhnQAjVbc/27/Ryk3IqToXJjgdO5pZtxmiQ/aHR0cHM6Ly9tYXJrZXRmbHV4LmlvL25ld3MtcGl0L2E4NWJkYTE4OGRjZjJmMjdhMmEyNGJlZDg5ZGQyNDdh)

Major consideration and aid for this DD are provided for by: [u/\_MoveSwiftly](https://www.reddit.com/user/_MoveSwiftly/) [u/newwobblywheeler](https://www.reddit.com/user/newwobblywheeler/) [u/whatisgf](https://new.reddit.com/user/whatisgf/) [u/TheGeffez](https://www.reddit.com/user/TheGeffez/) [u/XpensivPasta/](https://www.reddit.com/user/XpensivPasta/) [u/magharees](https://new.reddit.com/user/magharees/) [u/kittycat\_honeybunny](https://new.reddit.com/user/kittycat_honeybunny/) [u/theWalrusSC2](https://www.reddit.com/user/theWalrusSC2/) [u/ClubBoth8908](https://new.reddit.com/user/ClubBoth8908/) [u/a-dead-strawberry](https://www.reddit.com/user/a-dead-strawberry/) [u/PalladiumHands](https://www.reddit.com/user/PalladiumHands/) [u/Benjamindb94](https://www.reddit.com/user/Benjamindb94/) u/SecretSquirrel8888 [u/ShortsDestroyLives](https://www.reddit.com/user/ShortsDestroyLives/) [u/Virtual-Pin1025](https://www.reddit.com/user/Virtual-Pin1025/) And Viewers like Bbrothers. Also, please do not come in here hoping for new DD, this is merely the attempt to centralize all the good news, happenings, deals, plans and DD about BB. We will edit this and present updated versions every Sunday. Leave comments about what you think should be added or removed. Let's get a few misconceptions out of the way. Blackberry (BB) is not a phone manufacturing company anymore. In fact, it never was that exclusively if their original company name is anything to go by (RIM – Research in Motion). These guys are engineers for both software and hardware. In the last seven years, following their crushing defeat at the hands of the Apple Iphone over a decades long war, the company took a hard look at itself and decided “This isn't us”. They had grown too dependent on one product and it cost them dearly. The debt was crushing, in the billions, with no out in sight. Enter John Chen, a new CEO with a history of turning around failing companies back into industry powerhouses by focusing their capabilities towards the future and new products that have only tangential relations to their old operations. His crowning achievement being the turnaround of Sybase (going from a market cap of $362 million to $5.8 billion). His vision for BB? Turn it into a security and Internet of Things company (IoT – basically connecting appliances and vehicles to the internet for ease of access and update). Think it's crazy? Follow me through some of their products and you might grow less skeptical. The big products: **QNX** What is it? It's a computer Real Time Operating System (RTOS). Now most of you think it is just a car OS but I'm sorry (not really) to say that it is so much more. It is an RTOS period, that means it doesn't crash if one of the files is missing or non-existent. Currently, it is being used for medical equipment and robots, heavy machinery, ventilators (yes, that pandemic profit was there), train controls, factory automation systems, aerospace & defense and so much more. The list is ridiculous. **Why does it matter?** When I say that industries love BB, Governments love BB and people love BB, it's not just hyperbole. These contracts are given to them because, on top of being flexible with their OS, they have the most secure one on the market.Source: [https://blackberry.qnx.com/en](https://blackberry.qnx.com/en) **IVY** What is it? Basically an App that is cloud connected (hence the AWS partnership). The fun part is that it does not just work with the QNX OS and will be installable on any OS. With it, automakers will have the ability to deliver new features, functionality, and experiences to customers over the lifetime of their vehicles, meaning they can update your car through its lifecycle. It will also allow automakers to collect data on the vehicle and, through machine learning (not AI, which is a separate thing entirely), permit them to address issues. Things like tire pressure balance of the car, infotainment, cameras, GPS and driving mistakes will all be processed and actionned on either through the cloud or locally. **Why does this matter?** IVY is said to be subscription based through the automakers and will create a platform for developers, both private and public, to bring their vision of the perfect car experience to consumers. Remember when Apple launched the App Store? Think something similar with a similar investment fund behind it of 50$ million to help new developers in the field ([https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/company/newsroom/press-releases/2021/blackberry-launches-blackberry-ivy-innovation-fund](https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/company/newsroom/press-releases/2021/blackberry-launches-blackberry-ivy-innovation-fund)). It also helps that the partnership with AWS minimizes cloud storage costs for such an endeavor ([https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/12/07/investors-overreacting-blackberry-deal-with-amazon/](https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/12/07/investors-overreacting-blackberry-deal-with-amazon/) and [https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/company/newsroom/press-releases/2020/aws-blackberry-join-forces-to-accelerate-innovation-with-new-intelligent-vehicle-data-platform#:\~:text=OverviewContact%20Us-,AWS%20and%20BlackBerry%20Join%20Forces%20to%20Accelerate,New%20Intelligent%20Vehicle%20Data%20Platform\&text=SEATTLE%2C%20WA%20and%20WATERLOO%2C%20ON,%2C%20Amazon%20Web%20Services%2C%20Inc](https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/company/newsroom/press-releases/2020/aws-blackberry-join-forces-to-accelerate-innovation-with-new-intelligent-vehicle-data-platform#:%7E:text=OverviewContact%20Us-,AWS%20and%20BlackBerry%20Join%20Forces%20to%20Accelerate,New%20Intelligent%20Vehicle%20Data%20Platform&text=SEATTLE%2C%20WA%20and%20WATERLOO%2C%20ON,%2C%20Amazon%20Web%20Services%2C%20Inc).). Source: [https://blackberry.qnx.com/en/aws](https://blackberry.qnx.com/en/aws) Speculation: This offers a plethora of opportunities not just to automakers but adjacent auto companies as well. Ever see those stories about a Volkswagen car having issues with a particular part? With an IVY app, you will be able to see if this is a common issue across similar users of the part from different automakers or just the series of the car itself. Have a stellar driving record that you use in a neighborhood that has few car collisions? Your insurance company can use that data to reduce premiums for that area. The possibilities are endless. **Cylance** What is it? It's an antivirus powered by an AI (not a fake one like 99% of other companies claim to have built on machine learning. A REAL AI). Ever got tired of getting a virus on your device and running Malewarebytes or McAfee antivirus softwares to clean up the mess, wasting a day or two of your time? Forget that nonsense. Now. This antivirus is special in that it detects the issue before you download it and alerts you to the problem and why it would cause an issue with your device. Imagine, an antivirus software that prevents the problem before it happens rather than after. Huge. **Why does it matter?** Because Solar Winds hack and that's one example of many. Cyber warfare is real and here to stay, it's time to upgrade our individual, corporate and governmental capabilities in dealing with these issues. With increasing amounts of things being connected to the internet, more and more governments and companies are vulnerable to the more nefarious actors in the world. I mean, a casino got hacked through a fish tank of all things! ([https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/07/21/how-a-fish-tank-helped-hack-a-casino/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/07/21/how-a-fish-tank-helped-hack-a-casino/)) It's time to get on board with new tech to deal with this and BB offers that in a better package than every other competitor (looking at you Crowdstrike). **Blackberry Spark** What is it? Another major service that BlackBerry offers is its Unified Endpoint Security, which is a comprehensive security approach to endpoint security that is essential to protect against and remediate cyber threats while providing visibility across all endpoints. Through their UES, they plan on improving **cross-platform visibility, cyber threat prevention, and remediation,** while **simplifying administration.** **Why does it mater?** Diversification of your security portfolio and products is something that Blackberry was criticized for not doing. With an AI driven security apparatus that allows your employees to work from their own devices without compromising the company's security, especially in COVID and post-COVID times, you enable Blackberry to do just that. **But Moooooooooooom, you told me they wouln't rely on one product to be profitable! This sounds like more of the old.** Oh Billy... You couldn't be more wrong. Unfortunately, we don't have time to go through all of their products. Rolo (a secure business messaging system a la backberry phone with additional securities), AtHoc (a government emergency alert and employee messaging system, basically, critical event management), Jarvis, Blacberry Workspace, Blackberry Guard, Blackberry Optics, Blackberry SecuSuite, etc... You get the idea. The products from these guys are just growing in volume and utility but you want more information. Don't worry, [u/\_MoveSwiftly](https://www.reddit.com/user/_MoveSwiftly/) has you covered: [https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l4ehan/blackberry\_dd/](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l4ehan/blackberry_dd/) But what about the customers? Don't worry, [u/whatisgf](https://new.reddit.com/user/whatisgf/) has you covered with his post:[https://new.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/le53ol/comprehensive\_guide\_about\_bb\_and\_how\_it\_shall/](https://new.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/le53ol/comprehensive_guide_about_bb_and_how_it_shall/) **You mentioned debt in the billions though...** I did. Operating a hardware production line for phones isn't cheap. Normally, companies would need to go into debt to handle that. But John Chen, ever the shrewd business saw a few cards to play in the BB portfolio, namely that Blackberry had a ton of patents (to date numbered at 38 000), many of which could be leveraged to be licensed for stable returns to drive down the debt and even have more assets than liabilities as of last quarter. Coupled that with the shift from a lower margin hardware oriented industry to the higher margin IoT and cybersecurity sectors and you got yourself a winning strategy. **Patents** You want to pay off debt but not go into debt or dilute shares to do so... Blackberry says... “Hey, no problem man!” These guys have 38,000 patents to date and have begun selling off a few that are centered around telecommunications (Blackberry is NOT a phone company anymore damnit!) Huawei bought some in 2020 relating to smartphones ([https://www.techradar.com/news/blackberry-sells-smartphone-patents-to-huawei](https://www.techradar.com/news/blackberry-sells-smartphone-patents-to-huawei)), Facebook was sued for using their security and messenger patents without paying them anything and are now in negotiations to settle this out of court and there are rumours according to the latest quarter earnings report that a North American company is in talks to buy some patents from BB relating to... you guessed it telecommunications (if it isn't facebook) which will pay them regularly for seven years and give them the right to use the patents still for free. **Full List of Clients and Partners:** Blackberry Clients and Partners **Automakers:** Honda, Audi, Jeep, Mitsubishi, Ford, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Bentley, Lamboghini, Byton, Mini (cooper), Toyota, Subaru, Fiat Chrysler, Mazda, Nio, BMW, Porsche, Lexus, Kia, Land-Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Buick, Jaguar, Visteon, Skoda, Chevrolet, Nissan, Acura, Continental, General Motors, Baidu, Motional, Volvo **Other:** Denso, Aptiv, Bosch, Panasonic, Harman, Bugatti, LG, Vodafone, Bell, Carahsoft, CACI, Telus, iSec, KPMG, Tableau, Qlik, Frost and Sullivan **Major:** Amazon, Google, Sony, XPENG, XPEV, Li Auto, NVIDIA, Canoo, Microsoft, Intel, Verizon, Qualcomm, IBM, LG, Samsung **Major Investors:** PRIMECAP, Allianz Management, Hamblin Watsa, Ontario Teachers’ Pension, Vanguard, Harris Associates, ETF Managers Group, Wells Capital, Arrowstreet Capital, Kahn Brothers Advisors, Norges Bank Investment, Sedi **Governments:** Albania, Andorra, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Congo, Croatia, Czech Republic, DR Congo, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Guadeloupe, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Marthinique, Mauritania, Mauritus, Mayotte, Mexico, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Réunion, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Turkey, USA, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vatican City, Western Sahara, Zambia, Zimbabwe Of note is that Blackberry is a Canadian company. Part of the reason it staying in that country is that if it had moved or been bought up by a big hedge fund it would have been in a less dominant posture to take over the markets that it is targeting. Why? The Canadian government backs BB ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=\_hQQlCWMrQA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hQQlCWMrQA)) and being able to leverage a major industrial nation's government's for meetings and connections is something that is irreplaceable. **Who is John Chen?** It is one thing to have great products in the making but without the right leadership at the top, you got yourself a problem. John Chen is not rotten, in fact he is the exact opposite. An electrical engineering graduate from Brown University with a Masters in the same field from Caltech, John worked in various chip manufacturing and software companies, rising in stature and rank almost every year. His big break came when he joined Siemens Nixdorf as vice-president before being promoted to president and CEO of their Open Enterprise Computing Division in 1996. What he was known for would come a mere 2 years later when he joined Sybase, a company that had lost its war against Cisco in the enterprise application sector. Sound familiar? In 12 years, he turned a dead company with a market of $362 million to $5.8 billion powerhouse that was eventually bought out by SAP AG in 2010. His adventure didn't end there, as Chen is actively involved in international relations. In 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush appointed Chen to serve on the President's Export Council and as co-chair of the Secure Borders and Open Doors Advisory Committee. You might say to yourself... Why does that matter? It matters because that gives Chen a unique in with many politicians and policy makers enabling him to make unique and, often times, lucrative deals with them. This is not just with the US, as was exemplified by Blackberry's dealings with Chinese companies such as Baidu (informally known as the google of China) and other big industrial country players. He served as a director on the board of the Walt Disney Company from 2004 to 2019 and of Wells Fargo from 2006 to 2018. He has served on the boards of CIT Group Inc. and High tech startups such as Beyond.com, Niku Corporation, Wafer Technology, and Turbolinux US. He has also served as a member of the New York Stock Exchange's listing advisory committee. Point is, he has the connections needed to complete a turnaround of a company like Blackberry when he joined as CEO in 2013 and enacted their plan to go from a Phone Manufacturer to a Security and IoT company. As a sweetener to the pot, he has a contract that will pay him $90 million once the share price reaches 30$, talk about incentive. Is he the man for the job though? Well, take a look at many of his interviews. He has a few common things he likes and dislikes. He does not like being asked about China every 5 seconds in terms of his loyalty, he is a business man and wants to be asked about China, not because he is Asian, but because of the global market perspective he brings. He hates hype, he isn't here to waste your time with buzzwords and promises that cannot be attained. Small predictable growth is his goal, to the point that it is generally how he starts his interviews. Let's close this chapter with this, an interview he performed with RBC so you can see his vision for the company and how uncharismatic he is (need to admit your faults):[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGCnjw2\_n30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGCnjw2_n30) **The Biden Infrastructure Plan:** We all know that Biden wants to upgrade... well, everything about the United States. It's infrastructure is from the 1980s at best, being outpaced by Europe and China in ways that need to be gap closed on. High speed rail, repair of roads, bridges and irrigation, electrical grid and power generation upgrades, charging stations along the federal controlled highways and roads and a national adoption of the EV. If you will permit this brief jaunt in politics (I swear, we won't get partisan, we only care about bananas and money here), these maters aren't just things that the left want, they are things that the people in general want. High speed rail so that businesses like Amazon can transport your goods to your door in half the time? Good for margins. Electrical adoption of cars and upgrades along the national power grids? Good for utility companies and car manufacturers who can now produce a car that can be charged anywhere, even at home, allowing their customers to buy more upgrades or customizations for their vehicles. Bridges and roads? Come on, Michigan called, it wanted to tell you how shit its roads are and how much it affects their businesses as an example. Know what I heard? Biden wants to upgrade something something something... BB BB BB BB BB and more BB while federal government prints dollar bills for them. John Chen has connections to government, military and other industry powerhouses, he knows what they want. They want that QNX RTOS, they want the data that IVY will generate as well as the self driving car infrastructure that it will allow ([https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.00790.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.00790.pdf)), they want that atHoc system for emergency situations. The military wants more of what they got to offer ([https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s38314-020-0224-0#article-info](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s38314-020-0224-0#article-info)) on top of what they already use for their shipyards and security messaging apparatus. And when you see the Federal Government wanting to accelerate EV adoption with a “Cash for Clunkers” program to replace gas powered cars with their electric equivalents... the writing is on the wall ([https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/electric-cash-for-clunkers-chuck-schumer-president-biden/](https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/electric-cash-for-clunkers-chuck-schumer-president-biden/)). Now, suppose that, for arguments sake, the Biden Administration does not replace their entire federal fleet with hybrid and EVs from a QNX backed car company (unlikely as 68% of worldwide automakers are adopting it – [https://blogs.blackberry.com/en/2021/03/building-the-electric-vehicle-](https://blogs.blackberry.com/en/2021/03/building-the-electric-vehicle-software-architecture-matters?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=QNX_Content_BlackBerry_QNX_Has_Become_the_Leading_EV_Software_Supplier)[software-architecture-matters?utm\_medium=Social&utm\_source=Twitter&utm\_campaign=QNX\_Content\_BlackBerry\_QNX\_Has\_Become\_the\_Leading\_EV\_Software\_Supplier](https://blogs.blackberry.com/en/2021/03/building-the-electric-vehicle-software-architecture-matters?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&utm_campaign=QNX_Content_BlackBerry_QNX_Has_Become_the_Leading_EV_Software_Supplier)), it still works in BB's favor as the national infrastructure will now have to accommodate for those new EVs and charging stations will be more widespread leading to more people buying these types of vehicles which would boost sales from the car manufacturers that DO produce the QNX and IVY backed cars. They win no matter what happens! The only question is, how much do they win? To expand on the chip shortage issue, both sides of the aisle know that the current supply shortage is untenable from a national security standpoint ([https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2021/05/14/bipartisan-senate-group-said-to-plan-52-billion-bill-to-address-chip-shortage/?sh=5265c06569e6](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2021/05/14/bipartisan-senate-group-said-to-plan-52-billion-bill-to-address-chip-shortage/?sh=5265c06569e6)) and are planning a 52$ Billion bill to deal with it. That just makes me bullish on this one wrinkle being straightened out sooner rather than later. **Taking over the software of the commercial delivery system:** I could write you a long post about this but someone did it cleaner and better, so instead I'll direct you to a video by a better man than me on the matter:[https://youtu.be/2rSUJWlMZ4o](https://youtu.be/2rSUJWlMZ4o) The Volvo deal valuation and what it means for trucks in the commercial delivery system:[https://new.reddit.com/r/BB\_Stock/comments/mmdcfe/implication\_of\_the\_volvo\_group\_deal\_on\_bbs\_revenue/](https://new.reddit.com/r/BB_Stock/comments/mmdcfe/implication_of_the_volvo_group_deal_on_bbs_revenue/) But some people might tell you TESLA is coming up with their own autonomous driving system and dataflow market and... they are right. However, consider this: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/14/tesla-apple-tech/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/14/tesla-apple-tech/) You are locked into it's ecosystem. Same as with an Iphone vs an Android or Apple vs a Windows and guess which one is a better deal for consumers and more abundant? **Security, a business on it's own:** [https://twitter.com/al4alan/status/1393034174861283336?s=21](https://twitter.com/al4alan/status/1393034174861283336?s=21) Shoutout to Darkside! No but seriously, they recognized that had the US government used the Cylance technology BB offers, the colonial pipeline fiasco on May 7th would not have happened. Let's be honest, and this is not to be critical of the United States of America as this applies to most of the Western Nations, security software and apparatuses are out of date. Severely out of date. It's like using 1970s technology in the 1990s to fight off a threat that would otherwise be entirely manageable. Blackberry has the patents and technology to deal with this and, at some point, whether the customers (businesses and governments) like it or not, will need to buy it from them. Canada knows this. Granted BB is a Canadian company and they could have gone to another Canadian security firm but said "fuck it, I'll go balls deep into BB security for ALL my public servants to use and critical events management" ([https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/company/newsroom/press-releases/2021/the-government-of-canada-selects-blackberry-for-secure-productivity-and-secure-communications#:\~:text=The%20Government%20of%20Canada%20Selects%20BlackBerry%20for%20Secure%20Productivity%20and%20Secure%20Communications,-April%2012%2C%202021&text=WATERLOO%2C%20ONTARIO%20%E2%80%93%20April%2012%2C,productivity%20and%20secure%20communications%20needs](https://www.blackberry.com/us/en/company/newsroom/press-releases/2021/the-government-of-canada-selects-blackberry-for-secure-productivity-and-secure-communications#:~:text=The%20Government%20of%20Canada%20Selects%20BlackBerry%20for%20Secure%20Productivity%20and%20Secure%20Communications,-April%2012%2C%202021&text=WATERLOO%2C%20ONTARIO%20%E2%80%93%20April%2012%2C,productivity%20and%20secure%20communications%20needs).) This has gotten to the point that even HEDGE FUNDS can't deny the opportunity laid before them with Allianz Management buying up 5% of the total shares at 8.40$ ([https://www.holdingschannel.com/all/stocks-held-by-allianz-asset-management-gmbh/](https://www.holdingschannel.com/all/stocks-held-by-allianz-asset-management-gmbh/) \- scroll down, you'll see the position.) And of course... the patents in this sector (c'mon): https://preview.redd.it/dq9tml4tao171.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=276d872583fe2c810bc5fc1978c10d7eff359ec6 **Healthcare:** [https://finance.yahoo.com/news/frost-sullivan-names-blackberry-innovator-120000067.html](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/frost-sullivan-names-blackberry-innovator-120000067.html) [https://healthcareglobal.com/technology-and-ai/blackberrys-move-healthcare-timeline](https://healthcareglobal.com/technology-and-ai/blackberrys-move-healthcare-timeline) When we say QNX is a versatile RTOS, we mean it. Healthcare is getting more tech intensive and you need something reliable to manage that and be sure to not fail mid operation. Remember: if one part of the system fails in QNX, as an RTOS, it can keep operating thus not endangering the patient. Furthermore, how do you protect your R&D from ransomware attacks or losing critical patents to such invasive intrusions? Blackberry Spark would have a word with you sir... At least, that is what Frost and Sullivan realized when they invested in connecting their systems to it. Better yet! Their employees can now work from home in certain situations from their home computer without compromising security. Why is security an issue in the healthcare system though? Well, why isn't it? Many of the recent cyberattacks business' and the public sector have faced have been healthcare related. Personal healthcare files, medical patents, employee pension and benefits information, you name it, non-state and state actors want that information to better play around their political opponents ([https://www.reddit.com/r/BB\_Stock/comments/nljbzg/report\_healthcare\_data\_breaches\_spiked\_55\_in\_2020/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BB_Stock/comments/nljbzg/report_healthcare_data_breaches_spiked_55_in_2020/)). Oh but why would this affect my healthcare? Simple, every breach means a ransom needs to be paid and who pays for that? You, as the healthcare systems don't just make money magically pop up without increasing the cost of their services. Worse yet, these cybersecurity issues have become increasingly costly, with a jump in costs, as compared to 2019, by about 10.5%. **Bear Case:** [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/microsoft-connected-vehicle-platform-trends-and-investment-areas/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/microsoft-connected-vehicle-platform-trends-and-investment-areas/) [https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/google\_cloud\_for\_manufacturing\_connected\_vehicle.pdf](https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/google_cloud_for_manufacturing_connected_vehicle.pdf) [https://otonomo.io/](https://otonomo.io/) There are plenty of companies with products that achieve the same purpose as what IVY is meant to achieve, and have been doing it for longer Microsoft, Google, Otonomo - not to mention some OEMs like Tesla build their vehicle data platforms & analytics in house. IVY won't ship in physical cars until 2023, whilst other players like Otonomo are already in cars - over 20mn, and that figure was from 2020. [https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-autos-amazon-blackberry-idUKKBN28B50K](https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-autos-amazon-blackberry-idUKKBN28B50K) [https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/01/otonomo-raises-46-million-to-expand-its-automotive-data-marketplace/#:\~:text=Otonomo%20has%20more%20than%2025,Company%20and%20Avis%20Budget%20Group](https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/01/otonomo-raises-46-million-to-expand-its-automotive-data-marketplace/#:%7E:text=Otonomo%20has%20more%20than%2025,Company%20and%20Avis%20Budget%20Group). Also, let's consider that the Canadian market is so Mickey Mouse bogus that major players question what would be the purpose of messing over clients investing in predominantly banks and natural resources. The only exceptions as of late have been Cannabis stocks and $SHOP. It takes a lot to gain traction in a market with century old banks and zero effort extraction companies that sell to an infinite need and want market down south. THE RTOS they developed is a u-Kernel RTOS as opposed to a monolithic RTOS which have better performance, assuming you can stop them from crashing. The reason they chose u-Kernel being that they can deal with the crashing of an isolated software without compromising the RTOS as a whole but this causes it to run slower over time. **Technical Trading and Retail Investor General Interest:** Under construction[https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/mo5wsf/i\_built\_a\_program\_that\_tracks\_mentions\_and/](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/mo5wsf/i_built_a_program_that_tracks_mentions_and/) (General redditor confidence in stock) [https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-blackberry-limiteds-tse-bb-070335574.html](https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-blackberry-limiteds-tse-bb-070335574.html) (Implies that Retail Investors hold 52% of the stock, might need to recheck on that) The short interest has increased 11% from April to May ([https://www.marketbeat.com/stocks/NYSE/BB/short-interest/](https://www.marketbeat.com/stocks/NYSE/BB/short-interest/) and [https://www.reddit.com/r/BB\_Stock/comments/nat23k/short\_interest\_up\_by\_38\_million\_shares\_total\_53/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BB_Stock/comments/nat23k/short_interest_up_by_38_million_shares_total_53/)) This shorting didn't start in earnest until April. Not in January when the stock had a ridiculous, in April when the price was bellow 9$ and the PE ratio was at a sub 20.0X level (anything sub 20 is a steal in the investing world and most of the tech security stocks have a PE ratio of 34 on average - Crowdstrike has a PE ratio of 733.23X) I... can't make a better case for a long or mid term holder. Short interest is at 9.3% for the end of the month of May ([https://twitter.com/ORTEX/status/1397879074027155458](https://twitter.com/ORTEX/status/1397879074027155458)), bordering something that would normally be uncomfortable yet still manageable to most short sellers and the risk banks would take towards giving leverage to these actors. ([https://www.yerepouni-news.com/2021/02/03/naked-short-selling-the-truth-is-much-worse-than-you-have-been-told/](https://www.yerepouni-news.com/2021/02/03/naked-short-selling-the-truth-is-much-worse-than-you-have-been-told/)) Canadian capital markets issues with naked short selling and how it is not as rosy as it seems. A friendly whale with a Viking hat was spotted off the coast of 8.29. Sources say he is used to long hauls and plans to join it's pod in the 15.66 ([https://twitter.com/KjetillStjerne/status/1397347489351495682?s=19](https://twitter.com/KjetillStjerne/status/1397347489351495682?s=19)). Analysis for the April - May timeline: [https://new.reddit.com/r/BB\_Stock/comments/mnuor2/dd\_in\_wsb\_that\_got\_removed/](https://new.reddit.com/r/BB_Stock/comments/mnuor2/dd_in_wsb_that_got_removed/) by [u/PalladiumHands](https://new.reddit.com/user/PalladiumHands/) Speculation on price action from the end of May to end of June discussion: [https://www.reddit.com/r/BB\_Stock/comments/nkz7q1/bb\_expect\_large\_movements\_in\_1\_month/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BB_Stock/comments/nkz7q1/bb_expect_large_movements_in_1_month/) **Information to be added:** [**https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/concerned-shareholder-objects-to-blackberry-s-related-party-transactions-with-fairfax-851354230.html**](https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/concerned-shareholder-objects-to-blackberry-s-related-party-transactions-with-fairfax-851354230.html) TLDR please! Good stock. Diverse products. Diverse clients. Growth potential is high for next five years and dominant five years after that if executed well. Watch video by smarter person: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH2YwVbFIuY&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH2YwVbFIuY&feature=youtu.be) [https://www.dropbox.com/s/nyuz5eys7mwed4y/BlackBerry.mp4?dl=0#](https://www.dropbox.com/s/nyuz5eys7mwed4y/BlackBerry.mp4?dl=0#) EDIT 1: Included Bear Case. EDIT 2: the Tesla case on competition, added the "Security is a business on it's own" section, added "Healthcare" section, added a video in the TLDR section, bipartisan chip article added to the Biden Infrastructure Plan section, added Frost and Sullivan to the "other" of companies that have deals with BB, added Allianz Management to the investors. EDIT 3: Title portion changed from "part" to "update" as to better reflect what new posts on this matter are, Canadian capital markets naked short selling issues, added short interest for the end of May in the technical analysis portion, included Viking whale, added cybersecurity issues in the Healthcare section, add May to June price action discussion post in the technical analysis section. As always, new information with sources is welcome and this is continually updating. I like Canadian stocks that are undervalued. I hate the current Canadian market that is roughly only Mining, Banks, Oil and Lumber. At least with the entry of Shopify, Weed companies and BB resurgence as of late we can see a diversification of our economy (even if it's not as dominant as the prior sectors mentioned but that's a discussion for another time). \-Matt Believer in LTSBG

Last-mile delivery company OneRail is launching a new platform with Nvidia to use AI to help retailers make faster and more efficient delivery decisions.

Earnings call: Lowe's Q2 results show resilience amid DIY softness...

New model gives every enterprise retailer the ability to offer same-day delivery at a cost that works OneRail announced OmniSTAR, an AI-powered delivery decisioning platform developed with NVIDIA accelerated computing and acceleration software. The OmniSTAR platform enables enterprise retailers, wholesalers and distributors to evaluate every available delivery option for each order—across owned fleet, courier, parcel [... ] The post OneRail Launches OmniSTAR, the First AI-Powered Delivery Decisioning Platform Built with NVIDIA AI appeared first on SalesTech Star .

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OneRail is launching an AI platform called OmniStar, powered by Nvidia, to help retailers make faster delivery decisions.

Last-mile delivery company OneRail is launching a new platform with Nvidia to use AI to help retailers make faster and more efficient delivery decisions.

Logistics company OneRail is launching a platform using Nvidia's artificial intelligence software to help retailers make faster decisions on the most

Last-mile delivery company OneRail is launching a new platform with Nvidia to use AI to help retailers make faster and more efficient delivery decisions.

Logistics company OneRail is launching a platform using Nvidia's artificial intelligence software to help retailers make faster decisions on the most

OneRail launched OmniSTAR, an AI delivery decisioning platform built with Nvidia, to help retailers optimize last-mile logistics across 12

Welcome to our latest deep dive into cutting-edge technology developments, where we explore how high-performance computing intersects with everyday logistics. […]

Logistics company OneRail is launching a platform using Nvidia's artificial intelligence software to help retailers make faster decisions on the most efficient delivery options at scale, CNBC has learned.The new platform, called OmniStar, allows retailers to use AI to evaluate all of their ...

OneRail announced OmniSTAR, an AI-powered delivery decisioning platform developed with NVIDIA accelerated computing and acceleration software.

OneRail's last mile delivery software connects enterprise shippers to 12M+ drivers and delivers real-time visibility across every order.

New model gives every enterprise retailer the ability to offer same-day delivery at a cost that worksORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--OneRail today announced OmniSTAR, an AI-powered delivery decisioning platform developed with NVIDIA accelerated comput...

OmniSTAR's AI-driven logistics could revolutionize last-mile delivery, enhancing efficiency and reliability for retailers and distributors. The post OneRail launches AI platform OmniSTAR with Nvidia to overhaul last-mile delivery for retailers appeared first on Crypto Briefing.

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OneRail launches new AI platform with Nvidia for retailer delivery · Laya Neelakandan2 hours ago · watch now · John Ternus takes the helm at Apple — here's what to expect from the new CEO · Kif Leswing2 hours ago · Qualcomm rival MediaTek jumps 10% after $3.5 billion Nvidia AI chip deal ·

OneRail, a leading provider of AI-native last mile fulfillment and delivery orchestration solutions, today announced its inclusion for the third time in a ro...

one rail 联合 英伟达 推出 面向 零售商 的 人工 智能 平台 ， 助力 其 更快 做出 配送 决策 2026 - 09 - 01 19 : 5 1 物流 企业 one rail 即将 推出 一款 平台 ， 该 平台 采用 英伟达 人工 智能 软件 ， 助力 零售商 大规模 快速 选定 最 高效 的 配送 方案 。 这款 名为 omnistar 的 全新 平台 ， 依托 one ...

onerail launches ai platform with nvidia for retailers to make faster delivery decisions 2026 - 09 - 01 | original why this matters the launch of onerail 's ai - powered platform , omnistar , ma...

home onerail launches ai platform with nvidia for retailers to make faster delivery decisions hs 01 / 09 / 2026 logistics company onerail is launching a platform using nvidia ‘ s artificial inte...

onerail launches ai platform omnistar with nvidia to overhaul last - mile delivery for retailers 1 hour ago one rail , an ai - native logistics company based in orlando , has unveiled omnistar , a...

onerail pairs with nvidia to launch new ai platform for retail delivery aacat by aastocks 2026 / 09 / 02 08 : 29 cst short sell stock info logistics company onerail announced the launch of omn...

onerail launches ai platform omnistar with nvidia to overhaul last - mile delivery for retailers news tue , 01 sep 2026 11 : 10 : 02 utc onerail launches ai platform omnistar with nvidia to over...

економіка cnbc business · 1 вересня 2026 , 13:00 onerail launches ai platform with nvidia for retailers to make faster delivery decisions редакційний огляд редакція «гарячі новини » готує вл...

onerail teams up with nvidia to introduce ai platform for retailers , facilitating quicker delivery choices 19 minute ago / read about 0 minute author ： 小编 logistics firm onerail is on the verge...

onerail launches omnistar , the first ai - powered delivery decisioning platform built with nvidia ai by : onerail via business wire september 01 , 2026 at 09:00 am edt new model gives every ent...

nvidia và onerail ra mắt nền tảng ai hỗ trợ giao hàng nhanh bnews 11 giờ công ty logistics onerail đang triển khai nền tảng sử dụng phần mềm trí tuệ nhân tạo ( ai ) có tên omnistar của nvidia . ...