#220 – Amazon “Buy for Me,” TikTok misery profiteering, & Google reads your newsletters

by Shopifreaks | Apr 7, 2025 | Recent Newsletters

Hi Shopifreaks

Before we begin, I'd like to welcome doola to the Shopifreaks family as our newest official News Partner! 🎉🥳

doola is an all-in-one platform for e-commerce bookkeeping, taxes, and analytics that offers merchants a game-changing single point of contact for all their most important back office needs.

✨ Here's what doola brings to the table for e-commerce businesses:

Analytics – Track your store's performance, identify sales trends, and make confident decisions that drive real results with the help of doola's powerful e-commerce analytics platform. doola offers real-time updates with key insights like order numbers, sales, and performance across all your platforms including Shopify, Amazon, and more. Understand where your money goes with a clear breakdown of revenue, costs, and margins by platform, product, and time on market, with an up-to-date view of your inventory to keep your stock balanced based on performance.

Bookkeeping– Gain financial clarity into your e-commerce business like never before with doola's professional bookkeeping — available as a DIY platform and with human-assisted services. The combination of doola's advanced omni-channel analytics and bookkeeping platforms enable merchants to stay on top of their store's performance with real-time metrics and reports. Track your store's profits, sales trends, and expenses across all channels to make smarter decisions and scale your e-commerce business with the help of a dedicated in-house human bookkeeper.

Taxes – Stay compliant, maximize deductions, and keep your business protected with the help of doola's licensed CPAs who can handle everything for your store from preparing and filing returns to tax advisory support. doola's experts handle all your business tax needs, keeping you compliant and ahead of deadlines all year, while helping you find deductions to ensure that your business never leaves money on the table and you keep your hard-earned profits. Bookkeeping and taxes are hard, but doola makes it easy with integrated systems, compliance support, and dedicated professional guidance.

Business Formation – If you've been running your operation as a sole proprietorship or if you're from outside the US and looking to build a domestic presence, doola can establish your business as a legal LLC in a matter of weeks, handling everything from registration and compliance to helping you set up your business bank accounts and tax IDs. doola can seamlessly transition your e-commerce store into a fully compliant US business from start to finish so that you can continue to focus on building your vision.

By combining platform automation with the expertise of licensed professionals, doola delivers a streamlined, affordable way to manage analytics, bookkeeping, and taxes for growing businesses.

✨ Here are a few things that stand out about doola:

doola only works with in-house vetted bookkeepers and CPAs (no outsourcing or sharing your business data with third parties).
Merchants that opt for a human bookkeeper are paired with a dedicated human bookkeeper who learns the ins-and-outs of their business.
doola offers direct integrations with Shopify, Amazon, and Stripe, with more platforms coming soon including TikTok, Etsy, and Google Ads.
The platform also connects to 10,000+ banks/financial institutions via Plaid, allowing doola to capture your transactions across all financial institutions and every sales channel, even if they don't have a direct connection, with manual import options for detailed breakdowns.
doola handles initial sales tax registration and reseller certificate filings, and then works alongside all major sales tax collection platforms like Avalara, Host, & Numeral.
doola offers affordable plans for small- and mid-sized businesses starting at $300/year for access to its automated bookkeeping and analytics platform, with human-powered DIY bookkeeping and tax support beginning at $1,990/year. Full-service bookkeeping and tax support starts at $329/month.

🚀 Learn how doola can simplify your e-commerce back office:

Visit www.doola.com and click “Get A Demo” to schedule a live walkthrough with one of doola's experts, or “Create A Free Account” to explore their backend.

You can also reach out directly to doola's CEO, Arjun Mahadevan at [email protected] or on LinkedIn, who would be happy to connect you with the doola team to answer your questions.

And now, onto our regularly scheduled programming…

In this week's edition I cover:

Amazon's “Buy for Me”
TikTok profits from beggars
Google reads your newsletters
The Tariff Apprentice is at it again
TikTok lives on
Affirm said no to a bidding war
Spotify's new ad exchange
Amazon is getting expensive
Brazil investigates Apple
Shopify moves to Seattle
Rufus will make $700M
QVC streams on TikTok

All this and more in this week's 220th Edition of Shopifreaks. Thanks for subscribing and sharing!

PS: This week's edition of Shopifreaks is being published from the Galapagos!

Stat of the Week

Two-thirds of jobs on Indeed.com demand skills that AI can already handle, leaving around 300M jobs at threat, according to the company's CEO Chris Hyams. However he claims that there's not a single job posted on the job platform that AI could do completely alone, and that people will still be needed at the core of every department. Great, so only 90% of the department will be fired…

1. Amazon launches an agentic “Buy for Me” feature

Amazon has begun testing a new AI-powered feature called “Buy for Me,” which allows its app to make purchases for you from other websites.

Here's how it works:

When a customer searches Amazon for an item from a particular brand, they may see a section of results labeled “Shop brand sites directly.”
If they click the “Buy for Me” button underneath an item, they are taken to a product detail page inside the Amazon app that provides product information similar to what they'd see on one of Amazon's own listings.
If they decide to move forward with the transaction, Amazon will purchase the item for them from the brand's website.
Amazon uses agentic AI mixed with a customer's stored shipping and payment information to complete the purchase on their behalf.
Amazon says that it sends the information encrypted, and that it's not able to see customers' previous and future orders from the brand's website — although I doubt any Amazon customers would care if they did.
The actual transaction is happening on the brand's website, so the customer will receive an e-mail confirmation from the brand itself for the purchase, but they'll be able to track the order within the Amazon app through a new Buy for Me tab on the Your Orders page.
Buy for Me does not offer Amazon’s usual buyer protection or generous return policy since the sale is between the shopper and a third-party website, which Amazon discloses on its site.

Amazon says it is not receiving a commission from purchases made through the experimental feature, but didn't mention if it was going to negotiate a cut from sales in the future. (Early Prediction: They will — as either a commission, an advertising fee, or both.)

The feature, which runs on Amazon’s Nova AI system, is currently in beta and only available to a subset of customers in the US via the Amazon app, featuring a limited number of brand stores and products for now.

Amazon is the latest company to unveil an AI shopping agent, joining OpenAI and Perplexity, which have both recently showcased similar agents that can visit websites and make purchases on behalf of users.

2. Does TikTok profit from people's misery?

The UN accused TikTok of “profiting from people's misery” by taking fees and commission of up to 70% on digital gifts given to children who beg on the platform via TikTok Live.

Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, urged TikTok to take immediate action:

“Taking a cut of people’s suffering is nothing short of digital predation. I urge TikTok to take immediate action and enforce its own policies on exploitative begging and seriously question the ‘commission’ it is taking from the world’s most vulnerable people.”

TikTok says it bans child begging and other forms of begging it considers exploitative, and that it has strict policies on users who go live, but an Observer investigation found the practice to be widespread in countries including Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt and Kenya. Many of the live streams showed families with young children begging in their homes, elderly individuals in wheelchairs, and even people doing degrading and dangerous stunts in exchange for virtual gifts.

So what's the real problem here?

Nonprofits have been exploiting the likeness of poor people overseas for decades to solicit donations, of which the folks in need received a single-digit percentage of the funds raised, at best. Now TikTok is cutting out the middle-man between donors and recipients, and people have a problem with exploitation? Compared to what many nonprofits syphon off from donations, taking 70% doesn't seem like that large of an amount.

Besides, aren't all TikTok streamers begging for digital gifts in their own way? If TikTok were to draw a hard line in the sand between entertainment and “exploitative begging,” the folks doing the begging would simply adjust their strategy and change their verbiage to meet the guidelines of the algorithm — as we've seen other TikTokers do who talk about sensitive topics.

Also, I'd like to see what these so-called “exploitative beggars” have to say about the situation. The Guardian interviewed a bunch of privileged, effete intellectuals about their stances on the issue, but I never read a single quote from a beggar speaking to how TikTok has personally impacted their situation.

The real challenge is not knowing which beggars are doing so at their own will, and which ones are being coerced by third-parties, who control access to their earnings. However this is a tale as old as time on the Internet, especially with streamers in other more mature content categories (if you catch my drift), and a problem that TikTok can't necessarily solve on its own.

The question is: Should TikTok ban all begging content — including the non-exploited individuals who could genuinely use a leg up — in order to remove the “bad apples”? And what makes one beggar a “bad apple” over another?

I say, just let people on TikTok do what they want (less violence, dangerous activities, and sexual content). The algorithm can decide if the content is interesting to each individual viewer, and the viewer can decide if they want to give donations and/or continuing seeing this type of content — just like how we can decide to give or not give to folks begging for money on the side of the highway. We don't always know if they really need it either, but the choice is ours.

What are your thoughts on the subject of TikTok begging? Hit reply and let me know.

3. Google will collect and display promotional content from your marketing e-mails

Google rolled out a new feature that automatically uses a businesses' e-mail newsletter to automatically display marketing content such as new arrivals, sales, and promotions across Search, Shopping, and Maps.

Here's how it works:

Google automatically signs up to a business's e-mail list, or merchants can add [email protected] to their newsletters to ensure that Google is subscribed and receiving the e-mails.
From there, it reads your e-mail newsletters and extracts information about your promotions, new products, and social media profiles across Search, Shopping, and Maps without any additional effort on your part.
Google will particularly extract and showcase links to social media channels, highlighted social media content, current and upcoming sales / promotions, brand images and videos, and brand voice values.
The extracted content will be treated as “Content” under Merchant Center terms.
Merchants are automatically enrolled in the program but can opt-out anytime via Merchant Center.

Google wrote in its documentation:

“Save time and effort by letting Google automatically showcase your brand and products using information from your existing marketing content.”

Well, there's one more reason to start paying more attention to your e-mail marketing strategy!

4. The Tariff Apprentice: “You're Fired”

Over the past week, President Trump has made major changes to international tariffs, some which have been deemed early successes, and others which have quickly come back to bite us. I'll do the best I can to recap the news surrounding tariffs below:

April 2, 2025: Donald Trump's “Liberation Day”

President Donald Trump declared April 2 as “Liberation Day,” unveiling extensive tariff measures including:

A 10% baseline tariff on all imports from most countries, effective April 5.
Additional “reciprocal” tariffs targeting approximately 60 nations, calculated based on perceived trade imbalances and barriers. Notable rates include:
- China: An additional 34% tariff, totaling an effective rate of 54% when combined with existing tariffs.
- European Union: 20%
- India: 26%
- Vietnam: 46%
- Cambodia: 49%
A 25% tariff on all imported automobiles, effective April 3.

April 4, 2025: The world reacts

China announced a 34% tariff on all US goods, effective April 10, in direct response to the US measures.
Both the EU and Canada signaled intentions to implement countermeasures, with Canada specifically announcing a 25% tariff on American automobiles.
The announcement led to significant declines in global stock markets, with the S&P 500 dropping 3.3%, the Nasdaq Composite falling 4%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average declining nearly 1,100 points. Asian and European markets also experienced substantial losses.

April 6, 2025: Congress reacts

Senator Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced legislation requiring the President to notify Congress within 48 hours of imposing tariffs and obtain congressional approval within 60 days, reflecting growing bipartisan unease over the executive branch's tariff authority.

April 7, 2025: Further Advancements

President Trump threatened an extra 50% tariff on Chinese goods if China did not withdraw its retaliatory tariffs by April 8, escalating tensions further.
Analysts, including those from Goldman Sachs, warned that implementing the April 9 tariffs could increase the effective tariff rate by about 20 percentage points, potentially leading to a US recession.
Major corporations and financial institutions expressed concern over the tariff escalations, however, many business leaders were hesitant to publicly oppose the administration's policies due to potential political backlash.
Vietnam offered to eliminate tariffs on US imports completely, but White House trade advisor Peter Navarro said that the offer wasn't enough because “it's the non-tariff cheating that matters” — referring to Chinese products being routed through Vietnam before being imported to the US.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to be the first world leader to hold in-person talks with Trump about the tariffs, and officials told the WSJ that more than 50 countries had reached out to start negotiations.
The Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper said that policymakers were prepared to cope with US tariffs by using policy tools like monetary and fiscal easing.

Did I miss anything? Honestly it's hard to keep up with tariff related news, but I do my best to provide an unbiased recap of what's going on as major advancements happen.

5. TikTok lives on. Amazon wants to buy it, but Walmart does not.

Well, it's April 7th — two days past the April 5th deadline to secure a deal with an American company to purchase TikTok. No deal has been struck, and I'm still using the app.

Let's take a look at what happened last week:

On April 4th, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order granting another 75-day extension for ByteDance to divest its US operations before a ban would be put in place, aiming to provide additional time to finalize a deal that aligns with US regulatory requirements.

Trump wrote on social media:

“My Administration has been working very hard on a Deal to SAVE TIKTOK, and we have made tremendous progress. The Deal requires more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed, which is why I am signing an Executive Order to keep TikTok up and running for an additional 75 days.”

Negotiations for the sale of TikTok's US operations later faced setbacks after President Trump announced new tariffs on Chinese imports, including a 54% tariff rate on Chinese goods. This action led China to halt approval processes for the deal until there could be negotiations about trade and tariffs.

Ooh, so close!

Trump said to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday:

“We had a deal pretty much for TikTok — not a deal but pretty close — and then China changed the deal because of the tariffs. If I gave a little cut in tariffs, they'd approve that deal in 15 minutes, which shows you the power of tariffs.”

I love how he put the blame on China for “changing the deal,” when Trump is the one who added last minute tariffs into a “pretty close” deal.

To be honest, I don't believe any of this news. I don't believe that a deal was close, or that China is even participating in these negotiations. I don't think ByteDance has any plans to divest TikTok US to an American company at all, and instead are buying time to ramp up operations in countries with more stable economic policies.

The only public statement ByteDance has said on the matter is that the company has “been in discussion” with the United States regarding a potential solution for TikTok but that “An agreement has not been executed. There are key matters to be resolved. Any agreement will be subject to approval under Chinese law.”

Even if I'm completely wrong, and a deal is actually “pretty close,” why are so many companies like Amazon, Applovin, and OnlyFans (well, the founder at least) tossing out last minute bids for TikTok? Aren't we supposedly in the final hours of negotiating an established offer? None of this makes sense, and I call BS on the whole narrative.

Other TikTok news that surfaced last week:

ABC News reported that Walmart was considering joining a group of investors to buy TikTok, but Walmart later denied the report and ABC took the article down.
One person directly involved with the matter told press that the White House is considering a deal that involves leasing TikTok's algorithm from ByteDance.
Business Insider reported that TikTok staffers say Chinese leadership at ByteDance has been tightening its grip over US operations during the past year, replacing several key American executives with Chinese leadership.
TikTok Global, a Florida-based company formed by American investors specifically to acquire the app, is seeking $58B in damages from ByteDance, whom it accuses of a conspiracy to maintain control over TikTok's US operations in violation of antitrust laws, claiming that ByteDance deliberately thwarted its acquisition efforts by circumventing proper procedures, stifling competition, and maintaining control over TikTok's US operations, all under the guise of compliance with Trump's 2020 executive order. Now they're bitter that TikTok may be up for sale again and they're not part of the conversation.

Perhaps if Trump delays or fumbles the negotiations long enough, he can put off dealing with it until his third term.

6. Affirm said “whatever” to Walmart's business

Affirm's COO Michael Linford said the company wasn't interested in competing with Klarna for Walmart's business because doing so wouldn't have made economic sense, as Walmart accounts for only a sliver of its business.

Lindford told a William Blair analyst, “We felt like it was important to draw the line and not do deals that we thought were uneconomic.”

Walmart, which Affirm first partnered with in 2019, made up about 5% of the company's GMV and 2% of its adjusted operating income in the second half of last year.

Last month, Klarna disclosed that it would be the sole provider of BNPL loans through OnePay, a Walmart-backed app that customers can use to pay in-store or online. It was recently revealed that Klarna had to offer Walmart 15.3M warrants that can be converted into Klarna stock, valued at $500M, in order to land the exclusive partnership.

Wow, Klarna is really desperate to have a successful IPO and are pulling out all the stops! It makes sense though, as Klarna's had a tumultuous past few years, with their valuation spiking to $45.6B in June 2021 and then subsequently plummeting to $6.7B the following year.

The company contemplated an IPO in 2021, but decided not to proceed due to unfavorable market conditions. They confidentially filed to go public in November 2024, and last month publicly filed its IPO prospectus, planning to list on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “KLAR” — but two days ago, Klarna revealed that they've decided to postpone their IPO yet again due to newly announced tariffs and other market conditions. Klarna was aiming to raise more than $1B at a more than $15B valuation. Ticketing marketplace StubHub has also delayed its IPO plans, citing similar reasons. Oh well, there's always 2029!

I wonder if Klarna regrets the recent deal with Walmart, given that the impact of the announcement will likely wear off by the time they file again.

7. Spotify debuts new advertising tools and partnerships

Spotify introduced a new programmatic offering called Spotify Ad Exchange (SAX), which allows advertisers to reach its logged-in users via real-time auctions of its audio, video, and display formats across music, with podcast support on the way.

A programmatic ad offering provides a way for advertisers to buy and sell digital ad space using a self-serve dashboard, rather than through manual processes like direct sales or insertion orders. Prior to 2016, Spotify focused mainly on direct ad sales, which involved brands having to work with Spotify's sales team to run campaigns. Then in 2016, the company introduced programmatic ad buying for display and video ads via external DSPs like The Trade Desk. In 2018, the company introduced programmatic audio through DSPs.

Spotify also announced that it inked new partnerships with Google's Display & Video 360 and Magnite (available now), with Yahoo DSP, Adform and others coming soon. The exchange will initially be available in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, Brazil, and Mexico.

Additionally, Spotify made improvements to its self-serve Spotify Ads Manager platform, bringing more advanced targeting capabilities, new 1P and 3P measurement solutions, and new outcome-based objectives to help advertisers create, optimize, and measure their campaigns, including Spotify Pixel, Custom Audiences, key third-party partnerships, and a new App Installs objective.

Lastly, the company added generative AI audio ads to its ads manager, allowing buyers to generate a script, edit the draft, add voice-overs from a library of voices, and select background music.

8. Amazon is getting more expensive for buyers and sellers

Amazon's average prices for sponsored product ads were 48% higher in Q1 2025 than in Q1 2019, compared to a 41% rise on Google ad prices, a 37% rise on Instagram, and a 24% decrease on Facebook, according to data from the Tinuiti ad agency.

The increase in ad prices, along with new ad placements that litter customers' shopping experiences across every page, have helped turn Amazon’s ads business into a $56B a year empire. However the rising cost of ads may also be causing some sellers to switch to offering discounts and coupons (which have also recently gotten more expensive), or at times, move their ad dollars to other platforms.

Revenue growth from the Amazon Ads division fell to just under 20% last year, compared to more than 24% in 2023, down sharply from the more than 50% growth in advertising for 2021 and 2020. Despite the plateauing growth, Amazon is now the third-largest recipient of online ad dollars in the US.

The consequence of those ads? Higher prices for customers.

The average price of goods sold by 3P sellers on Amazon rose by 6.7% from December 2023 to December 2024, according to SmartScout's Amazon Inflation Tracker, outpacing the Consumer Prices Index, which rose 2.9% during the same period.

Scott Needham, CEO of SmartScout, says that rising FBA fees are at the heart of the price increases, which is why nearly 65% of third-party sellers increased their prices on the marketplace last year.

39.5% of Amazon Prime members said they noticed significantly higher prices versus a year ago for household essentials items.

9. Other e-commerce news of interest

Brazil's antitrust regulator, Cade, is investigating Apple's App Tracking Transparency feature following a complaint from Meta, which alleges that Apple's own apps are exempt from the user consent requirements imposed on third-party apps. Cade is examining whether Apple collects and processes user data under more favorable conditions than those offered to third parties, potentially leading to future penalties if the practices are deemed unfair. The App Tracking Transparency feature was introduced in 2021, requiring third-party apps to show a pop-up asking if iOS users want to allow a specific app to track them across other apps and websites, which unsurprisingly caused most people to opt-out of being tracked.

Shopify signed a lease for office space in Bellevue, Washington, subleasing approximately 31,000 sq. ft. from Google at the 112 @ 12th building east of Seattle, becoming the latest tech company to tap into the Seattle region's talent pool. There are more than 100 companies with engineering centers in Seattle including Amazon, eBay, Salesforce, WeWork, Zoom, OpenAI, and ByteDance. Hmm… opening a new US office… switching its stock listing to Nasdaq… listing a US address alongside its Canadian headquarters for the first time as principal executive offices… It kind of feels like Shopify is moving towards becoming a US citizen.

Amazon projects that its AI shopping assistant Rufus will indirectly contribute over $700M in operating profits this year as a result of its product recommendations increasing consumer spending on its marketplaces, according to an internal planning document obtained by Business Insider. The outlook is part of a metric called “downstream impact,” which is an internal financial figure the company uses to measure a product's potential to generate additional consumer spending. The document revealed that Amazon plans to expand Rufus globally and enhance its AI model for better service.

QVC Group entered into an agreement to host shoppable livestreams on TikTok Shop, featuring original QVC and HSN content created specifically for the platform. QVC first launched on TikTok Shop last August, and the expanded agreement introduces a wider assortment of brands and products to the platform alongside the opportunity to collaborate with TikTok Creators. Since launching on TikTok Shop, QVC reports that over 74k creators have featured its items on shoppable videos and livestreams.

Amazon promised free DSP spend for brands that committed to increase ad spend in 2025, and then delivered untargeted placements that they couldn't sell elsewhere. Brandon Fishman, CEO of VitaCup, shared his company's results after spending their $74,496 of free bonus DSP dollars, which showed 21.5M impressions, 3,670 clicks (0.02% CTR), 1,752 add-to-carts, 426 purchase, and $11,277 in total sales. Despite many brands being pitched this “guaranteed inventory” opportunity for 2025 commitments, Fishman says his data shows that it's simply not worth it.

Mozilla is turning its Thunderbird open source e-mail client into a full communications platform with the launch of Thundermail and Thunderbird Pro to compete with Gmail and Microsoft 365. Mozilla's offering aims to stand out with its open source values of privacy, freedom, transparency, and user respect. With the launch of Thunderbird Pro, Mozilla is adding a scheduling tool for sharing calendar links, a rebuild of its discontinued encrypted file-sharing service Firefox Send, and a new AI-powered writing tool intended to do the processing locally to eliminate privacy concerns. Lastly, Thundermail will offer a cloud e-mail hosting service using the open-source Stalwart stack, and users will be able to pick between thundermail.com and tb.pro domains. I hate them both. Support custom domain e-mails!

Amazon resumed making drone deliveries in Texas and Arizona, following a two month hiatus after suspending Prime Air deliveries to correct issues with the drone's altitude sensor caused by dusty air, which could have potentially caused its system to produce an inaccurate reading of its position relative to the ground. The company has returned to drone deliveries with a bang, setting a goal to deliver 500M packages by drone per year by the end of the decade.

GoodRx, a healthcare platform that helps American consumers save on prescription medications by offering price comparisons and discounts, launched an e-commerce experience for retail pharmacies in collaboration with grocery chain Hy-Vee that checks inventories when a consumer searches for medication to determine whether it's available at the pharmacy and can be purchased online. The company will then validate the prescription and complete the order after the consumer pays the GoodRx price online. The tool is part of a larger innovation strategy by the company designed to streamline prescription purchasing for consumers while supporting retail pharmacies.

Amazon Haul, the company's direct-from-China marketplace that it launched in November to compete with Temu, is now available on desktop, previously only available through Amazon's mobile app. Despite President Trump ending the de minimis loophole that lets cheap goods into the country duty-free, Amazon appears to be moving forward with its plans to expand Haul. Perhaps they know something we don't.

Sarah Wynn-Williams, the ex-Meta employee who authored the Careless People book (which I'm currently halfway through), will testify before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee next week to address Facebook’s “cooperation with the Communist regime in China, including FB’s plan to build censorship tools,” despite Meta's attempts to block her from communicating with members of Congress. The hearing will also address Facebook's alleged plans to “make American users' data available for Chinese use.” Members of the European Union and the UK have also asked to speak with her.

A new Arkansas law requiring age verification to create new social media accounts was declared unconstitutional and permanently blocked by a federal judge for being a “content-based restriction on speech that is not narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest.” Chris Marchese, litigation director for NetChoice, which filed a lawsuit against the state in June 2023 that resulted in a preliminary injunction two weeks before the law was set to take effect, said in a statement, “This ruling protects Americans from having to hand over their IDs or biometric data just to access constitutionally protected speech online. It reaffirms that parents — not politicians or bureaucrats — should decide what's appropriate for their children.”

PetSmart now fulfills 90% of its online orders from its 1,600 stores instead of from its seven distribution centers, just two years after beginning the initiative. The company says that shipping products from stores gets them to customers faster and at a lower cost, as 70% of orders are to customers within 20 miles of the store, allowing the company to deliver to customers quickly and offer same-day delivery through partners like DoorDash, InstaCart, Uber Eats, and Shipt. The company said that it has not closed any of its distribution centers, but that they are now focused on getting products to the stores or fulfilling orders of larger items that aren't available in stores.

A massive X profile data leak exposed the details of 2.8B user profiles — the result of a disgruntled X employee who allegedly stole the data during a period of mass layoffs after Elon Musk took over the company. The poster on Breach Forums claims that they tried contacting X through multiple methods but received no response, so they took matters into their own hands and merged the newly leaked data with data from another breach from January 2023. The new leak doesn't contain e-mail addresses, but does hold profile metadata including account creation dates, screennames, profile descriptions and URLs, location and time zones, follower counts, follower lists, and more.

Temu entered into an agreement with DHL Group to use its logistics solutions for its local-to-local initiative, which the company expects to eventually account for 80% of its sales in Europe. The agreement aims to enhance collaboration to better support small- and medium-sized businesses in established European markets. Additionally down the road, DHL will assist Temu in growing its presence in e-commerce markets in the Middle East and Africa.

TikTok shared an update about Project Clover, which is aimed at tackling data security, with an initial goal of ensuring that EU data isn't accessed by Chinese employees and government officials. The initiative was first shared last July, and now the company has reached a milestone with its EU data center in operation in Hamar, Norway. The location supports 200 jobs including cooling experts, engineers, and electricians. It is also working with the NCC cybersecurity group to oversee and confirm all data controls.

Shopify is expanding Sidekick, its AI-powered commerce assistant, from English-only to 20 supported languages, making the AI tool accessible to its global merchant base. Sidekick now automatically detects and respond in the merchant's language, blending Shopify's knowledgebase with a merchant's store data to provide personalized guidance, analyze business data, enhance product descriptions, automate tasks, and more.

Google is withholding the release of AI Overviews, its search-integrated AI feature, in most European countries due to regulatory uncertainty, according to a senior executive at the company. AI Overviews was launched in eight EU member states including Austria, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland, nine months after launching in the US, but in late March, Google held back in the remaining EU countries including France, which has strict national rules about copyright.

Nintendo will no longer open preorders for the Switch 2 in the United States this week in order to assess the impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions, following the introduction of steep tariffs on exports from Japan. Nintendo unveiled its much-anticipated console on Wednesday, the same day President Trump announced his sweeping global tariffs. The company says it still intends to launch the console on June 5th as originally planned.

Automattic, the parent company of WordPress, WooCommerce, and Tumblr, is laying off 16% of its workforce, or around 280 employees, as part of CEO Matt Mullenweg's mission to “protect Automattic's long-term future.” In October, following the start of a public beef with WP Engine, Mullenweg offered his employees $30,000 or six months of salary to leave if they didn't agree with his decision to fight the managed WordPress host, which led to around 8.4% of Automattic's employees leaving the company. A memo to employees said that this “restructuring” was necessary due to the competitive nature of the market and the speed with which technology is evolving, although it sounds like Automattic needs to free up some funds to pay for its legal battle with WP Engine.

Telus, a Canadian tech company, let go of over 2,000 people from its content moderation center in Barcelona, Spain after Meta severed its contract, following the termination of its fact checking program in the US. A spokesperson for Meta said the company has simply moved the services that were being performed in Barcelona to other locations, and is not actually reducing its content review efforts, but that doesn't seem very earnest given the recent news surrounding its fact checking program, and also given the fact that I'm halfway through reading the Careless People memoir, and my trust in Meta is at an all-time low.

EU regulators are considering fining X up to $1B after allegations that the company has breached Europe's strict Digital Markets Act, which allows for tech companies to be fined up to 6% of their global turnover. The results of the investigation, which revolves around X being accused of allowing illicit content and disinformation to be distributed and promoted through the platform are expected to be published this summer. New York Times anonymous sources said regulators are concerned about further antagonizing President Trump in view of the latest tariff war and Musk and Trump's close relationship, which could impact their final decision.

This week in corporate shakeups… Jamie Siminoff, who founded Ring, which was acquired by Amazon in 2018, is back at Amazon after leaving the position of Ring's CEO in 2023, following his launch and sale of another startup. Jonathan Poma, the co-founder and former CEO of Loop Returns, joined Shopify as director of go-to-market initiatives. Jeremy Segal, founder of Proozy, joined Zulily as its new CEO. Marcin Kusmierz was appointed to head Allegro as its new CEO. BigCommerce announced that its CTO, Brian Dhatt, will depart from his position at the end of April, to be succeeded by Marcus Groff, the company's senior VP of Engineering. Lastly, David Lau, Tesla's VP of software engineering, is stepping down after having been with the company for 12 years, with no replacement named yet.

BigCommerce announced the winners of its 2025 BigCommerce and Feedonomics Customer and Partner Awards, which recognize the most innovative and inspiring customers and partners on its platforms in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This year's EMEA awards featured 24 categories such as “Achievement in Growth” and “B2B Excellence Award,” with applicants evaluated by a panel of company employees and executives.

Every platform is Tiktok now. Substack is introducing a scrollable TikTok-like video feed in its app, aiming to capitalize on the potential void left by TikTok if it faces a ban in the US. The move comes a month after Substack announced that it would start allowing creators to monetize their videos on the platform and publish videos directly from the app. Substack first launched native video in 2022 and later introduced an in-house Media Tab in 2024, which has now been redesigned into a scrollable feed that will feature short-form videos, with plans to launch long-form and podcast previews in the feed soon.

Klarna announced the relaunch of Laybuy in New Zealand, combining a Kiwi brand with Klarna's global BNPL capabilities. Laybuy launched in New Zealand in 2017, expanded into Australia and the UK shortly after, and then ceased accepting new transactions and entered into receivership in June 2024. Two months later, Klarna acquired the company's assets in New Zealand and announced plans to relaunch the service and build upon its established brand in the region. I predict Klarna will leverage the brand to jumpstart its relaunch in the New Zealand market, slowly begin introducing Klarna branding alongside it, and then publish some corporate AI-generated announcement a few months later about how they've decided to fully rebrand to Klarna in the country.

Amazon released a new feature called Recaps for the Kindle that reminds readers what happened in previous editions of books in a series, similar to “Previously on…” segments when viewing TV shows. Recaps are available for best-selling English-language books on all Kindle devices in the US and will soon be available for the Kindle app on iOS as well. Shortly after the feature rolled out, users began expressing concerns about the use of generative AI to write the summaries, particularly about the possibility of the technology hallucinating plot elements that aren't actually in the books. Amazon should let authors replace the AI recaps with their own personally written Recaps if they choose to do so.

Pinduoduo says it will invest more than $13B over the next three years to support merchants by driving traffic and investing in other resources to strengthen its e-commerce ecosystem. PDD, which also owns Temu, reported slower quarterly profit and revenue growth in Q4 2024, and is now facing tariffs and other uncertainty in the US, one of its key growth markets.

🏆 This week's most ridiculous story… A Microsoft employee named Ibtihal Aboussad disrupted the company's 50th anniversary event and then sent an e-mail to a number of distribution lists that contain thousands of employees in protest of Microsoft's AI technology being used to power genocide in Palestine. Aboussad said that when she moved to AI Platform, she was excited to contribute to cutting-edge AI technology and its applications for the good of humanity, and was not informed that Microsoft would sell her work to the Israeli military and government “with the purpose of spying on and murdering journalists, doctors, aid workers, and entire civilian families.” She says that “silence is complicity” and that it's the responsibility of Microsoft workers to make their voices heard and demand that the company stop selling technology to the Israeli military. Note that I'm not calling Aboussad's actions ridiculous, but rather, the position she was put in.

10. Seed rounds, IPOs, & acquisitions

Truth Social revealed in a regulatory filing that it plans to sell more than 142M shares, including President Trump's 114M shares which are valued at around $2.3B and held in a trust controlled by his son Donald Trump Jr. The news caused the value of the shares to fall by 8% last week, following a more than 40% plunge this year amid a US stock market sell-off.

Crstl, a San Francisco-based provider of a SaaS application that enables no-code EDI workflow automation so brands can transact with the large retailers and distributors, raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A round led by Mosaic General Partnership and Cohen Circle Fintech Ventures, with participation from Shopify Ventures, bringing its total amount raised to over $10M. The new funds will accelerate the expansion of the company's AI-native solutions that enable businesses to expand beyond D2C into wholesale, marketplaces, and omnichannel retail.

Djamo, an African digital banking startup targeting underbanked consumers throughout the continent, raised $17M in a round led by Janngo Capital, marking the company's largest funding round to date. The startup, which has expanded in recent years beyond cards and P2P transfers into savings accounts and investment products, is aiming to ramp up services for small businesses, including encouraging them to pay their employee salaries through the app.

Circle, the cryptocurrency company best known for its USDC stablecoin, plans to list on the NYSE under the ticker symbol CRCL, according to recent SEC filings. The IPO will likely come later in the spring, as the company was plotting its listing at nearly the same time as Klarna (who recently canceled their IPO again). Circle reported $1.68B in revenue in 2024, up from $1.43B in 2023 and $785M in 2022, primarily relying on interest from backing its assets to make money.

WPFactory, a developer of WooCommerce and WordPress plugins, acquired Extend-WP, a fellow provider of WooCommerce plugins, for an undisclosed five-figure amount. With their portfolio of 19 premium plugins, the acquisition expands the range of tools WPFactory offers to customers

ServiceNow, a platform that helps businesses automate and manage digital workflows for IT, employee, and customer operations, acquired Logik.ai, an AI-powered Configure, Price, Quote platform that streamlines sales processes by replacing outdated systems with automation, for an undisclosed amount. Through the deal, the company aims to enhance its CRM and Sales Order Management capabilities, focusing on sales automation in complex industries like manufacturing and high-tech.

Peach Payments, a South African fintech that provides online payment solutions for businesses across Africa, agreed to acquire PayDunya, a West African payment platform, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition enables Peach Payments to enter mainland Francophone Africa for the first time, following its expansion into Eswatini, Mauritius, and Kenya in recent years.

Skylight, a decentralized TikTok alternative built on the AT Protocol, Bluesky's open-source ecosystem, raised an undisclosed amount from Mark Cuban and Graham & Walker Venture Fund. The startup is planning to launch its mobile app on Tuesday after only 10 weeks of active development with features including an in-app video editor, user profiles, and the ability to follow users, comment, like, and share videos. Upon joining Skylight, users will be automatically connected to Bluesky's 34M user social network, and posts on the app can be seen by users on Bluesky and other apps built on AT Protocol.

OpenAI closed its anticipated $40B funding round last Monday at a $300B valuation, marking the most money ever raised by a private tech company in history. The round comes to $30B from SoftBank and $10B from a syndicate of investors. The valuation puts OpenAI behind only SpaceX at $350B and ByteDance at just over $300B among the world’s most richly valued private companies. OpenAI said it plans to use the funds to “push the frontiers of AI research even further.” Meanwhile, I'd be happy if it could simply follow instruction to create an image.

Covision Media, an Italian tech company that specializes in developing high-performance 3D scanning solutions that convert physical objects into 3D digital twins, raised €5M in a round led by Redstone. The company's 3D assets are used by e-commerce firms for applications like virtual try-ons, 2D virtual product photography, and 3D videos or moveable images.

Similarweb, a Tel Aviv-based digital intelligence company that provides web analytics and traffic data to help businesses understand and optimize their online performance, acquired The Search Monitor, a platform that offers businesses ad monitoring, trademark enforcement, and affiliate compliance solutions, for an undisclosed amount. Through the deal, Similarweb will offer tools that empower retailers and brands to optimize ROI, protect their brand assets, and optimize their digital marketing strategies through one central platform.