#186 – Amazon’s new best friend, Google’s monopoly, & Squarespace’s domain fiasco

by Shopifreaks | Aug 12, 2024 | Recent Newsletters

Hi Shopifreaks!

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

Firework helps transform your website into your ultimate storefront with new ways for customers to interact, connect, and shop online.

Firework's platform offers powerful video commerce solutions for SMB and Enterprise e-commerce stores including:

AVA – a self-learning digital human designed to learn from shopper interactions, provide personal recommendations, and anticipate customer needs.
Shoppable Video – interactive videos that take shoppers through a shopping experience designed to increase engagement, discover products, convert sales, and build loyalty.
One-on-One Virtual Shopping – customers can live chat with store associates and product experts to foster real connections. (This is one of my favorite features. It brings the personal touch of visiting a retail store without leaving your house.)
Digital Showrooms – bring your in-store experience online with pre-recorded or real-time videos that showcase your retail store. Hosts can scan products directly into the digital showroom with barcodes, as well as offer invite-only showroom experiences.
Livestream – go live with multiple hosts around the world, poll your audience, offer limited-time coupons, highlight products for quick purchase, and offer real-time Q&A with customers. Plus you can simultaneously cast to your website and all your social channels at once.
Creation Studio – access Firework's easy video creation platform and edit thousands of videos at scale that you can use across your website and socials. You can leverage Fireworks pre-existing templates and creative assets to create professional video content quickly.

If the name sounds familiar, I've actually covered Firework in previous Shopifreaks editions — including their Shopify app launch in 2021, their Series B round in 2022, and most recently the launch of their human-like avatar AVA this past January. I feel like I've watched Firework evolve from a small startup to a comprehensive commerce solution in real time. They grow up, get funding, and leave the house so quickly! 😭

Who should use Firework?

Firework offers plans for both SMBs on Shopify and Enterprise merchants across all major platforms including Shopify, BigCommerce, Salesforce, Adobe, and WooCommerce.

Shopify merchants can get started on Firework's Free Plan which includes up to 10 videos and 1,000 monthly video views and later, if needed, upgrade to their $39/month plan for more views and video uploads.

Enterprise merchants can choose from the features above a la carte so that you're only paying for the video commerce solutions that benefit your store. You can also contact Firework for bundle pricing.

Firework's mission is to transform brand and consumer relationships one video at a time and cultivate lasting customer connections.

Get started for free today with Firework's Shopify App or request a free trial of their Enterprise solution.

And now, onto our regularly scheduled programming…

In this week's edition I cover:

Shopify POS crossing $100B in GMV
Amazon's partnership of the year with TikTok
Google's illegal monopoly
Elon Musk shuts down GARM
PayPal Fastlane has arrived
A rock road for new BNPL regulation
Google, Amazon, and Microsoft making shady deals
Afterpay brings BNPL to Cash App Cards
Shopify won its patent case
Amazon is raising fulfillment fees
X is moving out of San Francisco

All this and more in this week's 186th Edition of Shopifreaks. Thanks for subscribing and sharing!

Stat of the Week

Shopify Point of Sale crossed $100B in cumulative GMV since its launch in 2013, which is the aggregate value of all sales conducted through POS. – According to Coralie Delpha, Lead Technical Architect at Shopify

1. Amazon teams up with TikTok & Pinterest for in-app shopping

In one of the biggest partnerships of the year, Amazon has teamed up with TikTok to offer in-app shopping in the video app. The integration offers advertisers a direct path from sponsored content to purchase, without ever leaving the app.

Here's how it works:

Amazon product recommendations appear in a user's For You feed
TikTok shows real-time pricing, Prime eligibility, delivery estimates, and product details
Users who link their TikTok and Amazon accounts can complete purchases within TikTok

If this integration sounds familiar, it's because Amazon inked a similar deal with Facebook and Instagram in November of last year and then shortly after with Snapchat.

For Amazon: Remember when Amazon launched a TikTok-style shopping feed called Inspire? Amazon has been actively trying to enter the world of short form video content and shoppable videos, but lacked the social network to make it happen at scale. Teaming up with TikTok and other social networks further progresses Amazon's mission of, “You're going to buy from Amazon one way or another.”

For TikTok: The video app aspires to be the de facto place people go to discover new products in an entertaining way, and they aren't being short sighted about their mission. TikTok understands the value in being just part of the commerce solution with TikTok Shop while simultaneously growing a bigger market share for product discovery with Amazon and other partnerships.

Tiktok wrote in its announcement:

“From TikTok Shop to shoppable ads, we’re investing in commerce solutions that create a frictionless shopping experience for our users to discover, browse, and buy—wherever and however our community chooses to shop.”

This is where Meta went wrong in the past. They tried to control too much of the commerce journey by only allowing certain brands into their commerce and affiliate solution so that they could earn a slice of every transaction. It was like squeezing juice from a grape, whereas TikTok is like “let's build a water melon!” TikTok understands what Meta didn't — that a slice of watermelon is bigger than a grape — which is why Meta lost so much commerce momentum in recent years while TikTok shot into commerce space.

For now, the TikTok / Amazon checkout integration is limited to sponsored content, but it wouldn't surprise me if TikTok brought the integration to its affiliate network and let creators tag Amazon products in the same fashion via their organic content.

As for Pinterest… Amazon is bringing the same style in-app shopping experience to PInterest's platform as well. This is an expansion to the deal that the two companies made earlier this year that brought third-party ads from Amazon to the Pinterest platform. The new integration now makes those ads shoppable directly from Pinterest without having to visit Amazon.

In other TikTok news… the platform is making it easier for users to identify movies and TV shows from posted clips with a new feature called TikTok Spotlight, which adds an anchor link to a landing page with more details about the movie or show. The page also includes a synopsis, cast info with their official TikTok accounts, and other videos linked to the same title, as well as details on where to watch the show if it's on a streaming service, or a way to buy tickets if a film is still in theaters. Absolutely brilliant TikTok! You've done it again.

2. Google is an illegal monopoly, according to a federal judge

In a big reveal that shocked absolutely no-one and sent shock waves nowhere, a federal court found that Google illegally abused its market power to quash search competition. For reference, over 90% of web searches are made via Google, which generated over $300B in revenue in 2023.

Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia wrote in his judgment:

“Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. The only apparent constraint on Google’s pricing decisions are potential advertiser outcry and bad publicity. Google, however, has managed to avoid those pitfalls by ramping up its pricing incrementally … many advertisers do not even realize that Google is responsible for the changes in price.”

In summary, Mehta's ruling determined that:

The Justice Department was right in saying that Google violated antitrust law by inking deals with Apple and other phone makers to make Google the default search engine on smartphones.
Google’s distribution agreements are exclusive and have anticompetitive effects.
Google has not offered valid procompetitive justifications for those agreements.
Google's conduct has allowed it to earn monopoly profits.

Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, responded to the ruling:

“This decision recognizes that Google offers the best search engine, but concludes that we shouldn’t be allowed to make it easily available. Given this, and that people are increasingly looking for information in more and more ways, we plan to appeal.”

Throughout the trial, Google argued that its search engine faces competition from other places, such as on Amazon, TikTok and Reddit (which Google now has a huge deal with) and also from ChatGPT and other AI search engines and chatbots (which Google now competes with).

However that defense seems neither here nor there in regards to the ruling. Having current competition doesn't prove that you haven't historically been involved in anticompetitive practices to secure a dominant position.

What will happen if the decision is not overturned?

The judge will rule on “remedies” for the case in the coming months, but a few potential measures include:

Blocking Google from paying to secure prime placement for its search engine on mobile devices and web browsers. However this could deprive companies of billions of dollars in revenue, as most users would probably keep Google search as their default without the agreements.
Requiring browsers and phone makers to directly ask consumers which search engine they want to use as their default. Europe tried this, but Google remained dominant.
Breaking up Google's businesses. However that remedy might be a difficult one to enforce.
Google is also likely to face a monetary fine, although fines are “not the primary way in which the American antitrust system enforces the law,” because they tend to be a “drop in the bucket for a huge, very profitable company like Google,” according to Vanderbilt University law professor Rebecca Allensworth.

Federal antitrust law has not been invoked against a big tech company since the Microsoft antitrust case more than two decades ago, but something tells me that more are on the horizon.

🔥 Partner News

OpenStore is expanding its footprint with the opening of an office in New York City, marking a significant milestone in the company's journey as they continue to grow and innovate. Miami will remain the heart of OpenStore's operations, and the New York City office will allow the company to access top talent in the city's vibrant and dynamic tech scene. Plus being in the same timezone as their Miami HQ will allow for easy collaboration across offices. The new office officially opened on August 5th to host 30 employees across engineering, product, and design.

3. Squarespace is in trouble after the Google Domains acquisition

Squarespace is completely botching its Google Domains acquisition. They might have another class-action lawsuit on their hands soon because they are effectively shutting businesses down right now by locking customers out of their Google Workspace e-mail.

A friend shared his story with me:

“I got an email 24 mins ago saying ‘To ensure uninterrupted service, please update your credit card information in the Billing panel. If we can't authorize your payment in the next three days, your Google Workspace account will be suspended and removed from your site.'

I go to login to my business email… it's already suspended.

That's not 3 days. That's 24 minutes. They lied & fucked me. I literally thought I lost all my emails. It was a big freakout for a moment.”

He also noted that the price given to him in the e-mail stated $6/month, but the only price visible on Squarespace's website was $7.20/month — with no option to upgrade to an annual plan to hit the $6 price.

Lastly he showed me a video of a never ending loop on Squarespace's website when trying to get support.

While my friend was lucky and was able to resolve his issue after a few days, other Squarespace customers haven't been so lucky.

Screenshots show the following posts from users on the company's Facebook page:

“Have you been locked out of your account? Good luck getting support to help you. We have been locked out of our account for 3 days now and all square support can do is keep on sending us the same email over and over again for documents. We've had to shut our doors because of this and squarespace does not care.”
“My credit card number changed at approximately my billing date. Since my payment was rejected, my account was canceled. Now I'm getting an e-mail from you saying you want me to change my payment method. However, as hard as I've tried, as many lines of instructions as I have read, there seems to be no reasonable way for me to update my payment information and get my url reactivated. And yes, I've read all the instructions you gave previous complainers. Your instructions are worthless.”
“Hi Squarespace, please can you advise how on earth to speak to someone in your Customer Service. My Google Workspace has been suspended since Sunday – apparently due to exceeding the storage limit. I have been trying to contact Squarespace since Monday but have had no response. I have tried the chat function on your website, I have raised a ticket on your website, and I also spoke to a representative at Google Workspace who said he would contact you on my behalf – but he has had no luck getting a response from Squarespace… I have now had five days without accessing my business e-mails.”
“Is anyone else not able to get through to Squarespace support? Their live chat has been too busy to help me for days… they haven't responded to my email request for support in days, and their latest social posts are ancient (FB, IG). I have a website that's not connecting to my URL, their support page can't answer it, and NOBODY IS THERE TO HELP ME.”
“I'd really appreciate help on my website that is down as well as my company email address. I have logged a support ticket but replies will go to the email address that is down. Very frustrating and very hard to contact your support teams in this situation.”
“I can't get anyone to help me. No customer service phone line and no existing live chat at all. I have been waiting for someone to respond to my email for 2 days. How can I get someone to help me? I am a Google customer and this is the worst experience ever.”
“Squarespace, how to get a support? Livechat does not work, not answers for already 2 emails sent last week and 2 weeks ago!“

From the posts, it seems that some customers have been locked out of their e-mail accounts for going on 2 weeks now! I don't know about you, but I'd be in a world of hurt if I were locked out of my e-mail for 24 hours! Let alone 2 weeks.

This isn't the first issue Squarespace has experienced since acquiring Google Domains. As you might recall, in July, an error in the handover of Google Domains led to the takeover of at least a dozen cryptocurrency websites that were then pointed to fraud portals designed to hijack cryptocurrency investor accounts.

Google really needs to step in at some point. Sure they sold the domains division, but there's a responsibility to customers to manage a seamless transition. Google, your hands aren't clean with this one either.

Public Service Announcement: This is the risk of having your domain tied to your e-mail host. If something goes wrong, and the company isn't responsive, you're in a very difficult situation (like the folks at Squarespace).

My rule of thumb is to ALWAYS separate my registrar / website host / e-mail host from each other. That way, in a scenario such as this, if my Google Workspace went down, I could temporarily point my MX Records to my web server and still access my e-mails via webmail.

The above is unfortunately a failsafe that most people don't have, because companies typically push you upon domain registration to use all their in-house e-mail and hosting. “It's easier” they claim — until it's not.

Have you been experiencing issues with your Google Domains / Workspace accounts since the transition? Hit reply and let me know or join the convo on LinkedIn.

4. Elon Musk single-handedly shuts down GARM

X is suing The World Federation of Advertisers, Mars, CVS, Unilever, and Orsted for allegedly colluding to boycott its social media platform.

Don't all boycotts have some level of “colluding”? Or would normal people just call it “organizing”?

The World Federation of Advertisers launched its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) in 2019 to safeguard digital media by reducing the availability and monetization of harmful content online. Its 100-plus members include major advertisers, agency groups, and ad tech platforms.

The lawsuit reads:

“Defendants conspired, along with dozens of non-defendant co-conspirators, to collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue from Twitter [now X] … Concerned that Twitter might deviate from certain brand safety standards for advertising on social media platforms set through GARM, the conspirators collectively acted to enforce Twitter’s adherence to those standards through the boycott.”

“This is an antitrust action relating to a group boycott by competing advertisers of one of the most popular social media platforms in the United States. GARM’s members did, abruptly and in lockstep, boycott Twitter by discontinuing entirely or substantially reducing their previously substantial advertising purchases.” — which the lawsuit called a “conspiracy” and “collusion.”

All this, of course, coming just months after Elon Musk told advertisers to “Go fuck yourself” at a New York Times DealBook Summit in November. He literally said, “Don't advertise. Somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising?! Blackmail me with money? Go fuck yourself. Go. Fuck. Yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.”

Well apparently many of those advertisers took those words to heart and decided to organize an advertising boycott against X, which Elon doesn't think is far.

Regardless of the merits of the lawsuit, the potential threat of litigation was too much for GARM to bear the cost of. The company has announced that it will discontinue its activities:

“GARM is a small, not-for-profit initiative, and recent allegations that unfortunately misconstrue its purpose and activities have caused a distraction and significantly drained its resources and finances. WFA therefore is making the difficult decision to discontinue GARM activities.”

Wow, what a win for Elon Musk! I'm sure those advertisers will come running back to X now…

Despite GARM shutting down activities, it's yet to be determined if X will withdraw its lawsuit from the initiative's parent organization World Federation of Advertisers, which is not shutting down, or what will come of the lawsuit against the individual advertisers named.

5. PayPal Fastlane now available to all US merchants

PayPal Fastlane, its one-click guest checkout solution, is now available to all US merchants after testing it with select businesses since the beginning of the year.

What is PayPal Fastlane? Essentially its PayPal's answer to Shop Pay, Amazon Pay, and Bolt's one click checkout features. The service stores customer data like name, email, phone number, shipping address, and payment details and pulls all of this info onto a merchant's website without the customer having to log in. Users only need to enter a verification code they get via e-mail to autofill the information.

PayPal relies on signals like a customer entering their phone number or e-mail to fetch data from Fastlane, and if a customer is not already signed up to the service, PayPal gives them the option to do so during checkout.

Why does it matter if customers can one-click checkout as a guest? Can't they just sign in to their accounts?

According to a study by Capterra:

43% of customers prefer checking out as a guest so that they don’t have to sign in to e-commerce websites.
72% of consumers choose guest checkout even if they have an account.

PayPal claims that during its preliminary tests of Fastlane, guest checkout conversions were around 80% and checkouts were 32% faster.

For now, Fastlane is only available to US merchants, and they must use the company’s payment processing services, such as PayPal Braintree or PayPal Complete Payments.

Fastlane might be a great addition to a WooCommerce, Magento, commercetools, or BigCommerce store, but I don't see the value in adding it to a Shopify store, as most Shopify users already have a Shop Pay account which effectively does the same thing. For that reason, I'm guessing that PayPal will be going after the non-Shopify e-commerce market to start. Or at least, that's what I would do.

6. The House wants to repeal the CFPB's new BNPL rules

Last week I reported (story #5) that the regulatory landscape of BNPL is unclear. In May, regulation had finally come to BNPL in the US with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau declaring that BNPL lenders must provide consumers the same key legal protections and rights that apply to conventional credit cards, including the right to dispute charges and demand a refund from the lender after returning a product. The new regulation effectively labeled BNPL lenders as credit card providers and said they must now meet the respective criteria under the Truth in Lending Act.

However as I shared last week, major BNPL players like Klarna and Affirm argued that the CFPB's approach was “misguided” and “confusing for consumers” and that “BNPL products are fundamentally different from credit cards and should not be regulated under the same framework.”

I agree with those sentiments, and apparently so do some members of the House of Representatives, because last week, House Republicans began an effort to repeal the CFPB's interpretive rules. The measure (H.J. Res. 195), introduced Aug 2 by Rep. Byron Donalds, would use the Congressional Review Act to repeal the CFBP's rules, arguing that, at a minimum, the CFPB should allow the BNPL industry more time to prepare for the changes by delaying implementation of the guidance until October 2025 — which is exactly what the major BNPL players were asking for. (Who got paid off? LOL)

BNPL companies have previously petitioned the CFPB that “an extension is necessary for BNPL lenders to test and responsibly implement necessary changes before civil liability attaches to these additional requirement.”

The Congressional Review Act allows lawmakers a period of time to overturn new regulations and certain informal rules issued by federal agencies. Both the U.S. House and Senate must pass a joint “resolution of disapproval” targeting the specific rule, and the resolutions can pass with a simple majority vote.

The National Law Review wrote that the House Resolution is unlikely to pass “given the political dynamics in the House and Senate.”

7. To buy AI startups, or not to buy. That is the question.

How much of a company can you own without technically acquiring it? And how much control can you exert over a company without running it?

Those questions what regulators are currently wondering in regards to the thin line being drawn between Big Tech partnering with AI startups, as opposed to acquiring them.

In a new piece by the New York Times entitled “The New A.I. Deal: Buy Everything but the Company,” reporters Erin Griffith and Cade Metz share examples of how Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have made deals with AI startups for their technology and top employees, but have shied away from owning the firms. Griffith and Metz wrote:

“While big tech companies typically buy start-ups outright, they have turned to a more complicated deal structure for young A.I. companies. It involves licensing the technology and hiring the top employees — effectively swallowing the start-up and its main assets — without becoming the owner of the firm.”

Example #1: In 2022, Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas left their jobs developing AI at Google to launch Character.ai, a chatbot startup, because they said Google moved to slowly. Flash forward two years and both founders are returning to Google, along with 20% of Character AI's employees and the company's AI tech, after striking a deal to join its AI research arm. Despite getting their technology and top team members, Google didn't technically acquire the company. Instead, Google agreed to pay $3B to license the technology, of which about $2.5B will be used to buy out Character.ai's shareholders.

Example #2: Microsoft agreed to pay the AI startup Inflection more than $650M to license its technology and hire almost all of its employees, including its founder, Mustafa Suleyman, who now leads Microsoft's consumer AI business. Inflection subsequently hired a new CEO, but just two employees stayed on while the rest — roughly 70 people — joined Microsoft.

Example #3: In June, Amazon inked a deal with the AI startup Adept, paying the company at least $330M to license its technology and bring many of its employees and its founder, David Luan, to the company. Teams working on product, sales and other areas did not join Amazon; the company only hired the researchers who built Adept’s technology.

Regulators are watching:

In January, the FTC announced that it's working on a broad study of AI deals between startups and Microsoft, Amazon, and Google.
In June, the FTC, began investigating whether Microsoft should have notified regulators about the Inflection deal, which should have been subjected to more scrutiny.
Last week, UK regulators began investigating Amazon's $4B investment into Anthropic for whether or not the partnership has resulted in the creation of a relevant merger situation.

Justin Johnson, a business economist who focuses on antitrust at Cornell University, said, “Large tech firms may clearly be trying to avoid regulatory scrutiny by not directly acquiring the targeted firms.” But “these deals do indeed start to look a lot like regular acquisitions.”

Have Big Tech companies crossed the thin line between partnerships and acquisitions? Hit reply and share your thoughts or join the convo on LinkedIn.

8. Afterpay brings its BNPL to Cash App Cards

Block is testing an integration of Afterpay, its BNPL service, with a debit card tied to Cash App, allowing customers to convert purchases they've made using their card into a pay-in-four installment loan, in exchange for a fixed fee that the user is aware of in advance.

In a shareholder letter, the company wrote that the offering would allow “customers to convert certain purchases into a short term loan and access BNPL anywhere they use their Cash App Card for a small fee.”

Block didn't share how many consumers are currently eligible for the product, only sharing in an earnings report that it's seeing “strong adoption” and that the company plans to scale the product in the coming months.

Block CFO Amrita Ahuja said, “We're going to start small,” with plans to roll out the feature to more of the card's 24M users “based on the signals that we see.”

The company is currently in restructure mode. Two weeks ago I reported that Jack Dorsey wrote a note to Block employees announcing that the company is getting an overhaul to its internal reporting structure that will blow up the boundaries between various business lines, grouping employees together instead based on roles like engineering, design, and sales. Dorsey said that the move would take Block back to how it started as a company and is intended to address its three problems of “collaboration, craft, and flexibility.”

In other Block news… Cash App users may be eligible to claim up to $2,500 in compensation from the company, which agreed earlier this year to pay $15M to settle a suit claiming the company had failed to protect customers from data breaches. The settlement benefits window has now opened, and users can check their eligibility and make their claim on the lawsuit website.

9. Other e-commerce news of interest

Shopify came out ahead in a federal court case brought by DKR Consulting, which claimed that Shopify had infringed on patents related to e-commerce buy buttons and social media. Shopify contended that its use of the technology involved general methods of e-commerce that were not patentable and requested a dismissal of the case in March, which a judge recently agreed to this month.

FedEx expanded its services in China, now allowing e-commerce merchants to reach the U.S. and Europe and capitalize on cross-border shipping growth. Demand for air cargo services from China exceeded the company's expectations, and it anticipates continued growth in the space.

Walmart Realm launched Your Dorm Your Way, an immersive shopping experience that features five dorm rooms from which college students can shop, just in time for the back to school season. The influencer-led virtual shops display items in a model room and let shoppers directly purchase from the retailer's site as they explore spaces. This is a dorm room, right? So what's in that plastic bag over there in the top drawer?

South Korea's government is shrinking the window of time that e-commerce marketplaces have to pay sellers from 60 days to 40 days to ensure that small sellers aren't caught in a cash crunch. The changes were announced in responses to the recent payment delinquencies by WeMakePrice and TMON, which I reported on last week (story #6).

Amazon is raising FBA fulfillment fees during this upcoming holiday season starting in mid-October. The company informed sellers that its seasonal fee was similar to those charged by other major carriers and would cover increased fulfillment and transportation operating costs during the busy season. Correct me if I'm wrong about seasonal surge fees, but I thought the increased volume was supposed to cover the increased fulfillment costs? What's next with these companies — a slow season fee?

Poshmark introduced Listing Streaks, a new incentive for sellers to post new listings at least once per week. If sellers are able to continue that weekly streek, they'll earn rewards for each milestone. The company did not explicitly say what the rewards will be, but its FAQ mentioned buyer shipping discounts that must be used within 7 days after earning the reward.

X is moving out of its iconic San Francisco headquarters soon, according to its CEO Linda Yaccarino, who told employees that they will soon need to vacate the offices. There are still no official announcement to the public regarding the move, but Yaccarino told employees that it will take place in the coming weeks. Her announcement pointed out various locations where employees may transfer, including xAI's offices in Palo Alto, but it did not mention Musk's wish to move X to Texas.

One of the co-founders of OpenAI, John Schulman, quit the company to join rival Anthropic. In a post on X, Schulman explained that his decision to move was driven by a desire to focus more on AI alignment and return to hands-on technical work, and that it was NOT due to lack of support for AI alignment at OpenAI. His departure follows fellow co-founder Ilya Sutskever's departure this past May. Hours later, co-founder and President Greg Brockman posted that he was taking a sabbatical until the end of the year. A third executive, Peter Deng, also departed the company, according to The Information. This is all weird, right? See my expanded post on LinkedIn.

Funko, the collectible toy maker that produces those POP! big head dolls, agreed to pay over $2.1M in legal fees to resolve a lawsuit that alleged former CEO Brian Mariotti and other execs had breached fiduciary duties by making false and misleading statements to stockholders and the public. According to the plaintiffs, Funko's executives were unjustly enriched by selling their personally held shares at artificially inflated prices while in possession of material nonpublic information.

Wix became the first reseller of Gemini for Workspace, which enables Wix users to leverage the generative AI solution across their Google Workspace with apps like e-mail, calendar, video conferencing, documents, spreadsheets, and more. The new Gemini integration allows users to write documents, design slideshows, write and summarize emails, and organize projects.

ByteDance launched a new app called Jimeng AI that can generate videos based on text prompts. The app is now available on the Apple App Store and Google Play store for Chinese users. There is no word on if / when it will be available in the US or other markets.

Former Twitter Chairman Omid Kordestani is suing X, claiming that Elon Musk is refusing to cash out more than $20M worth of shares he is owed. Kordestani served as the company's CEO from 2015 to 2020 and stayed on the board for two more years until Musk bought the platform for $44B in 2022. The lawsuit states that the bulk of his compensation was stock, and that Musk is refusing to pay out.

Roku is integrating The Trade Desk's UID2 cookie-less tracking system into its Roku Exchange media sales platform to enable more precise targeting to its advertisers. Unified ID 2.0 is a privacy-focused open standard that allows advertisers and agencies to work together without third-party cookies, leveraging encrypted email and phone numbers to create unique identifiers while still protecting user privacy. Marketing Dive says that the move “shows how the industry has moved on” from cookies, despite Google's announcement that it would shelve its plans to depreciate third-party cookies in its Chrome browser. Which makes sense, because are companies supposed to just wait around for Google to change their mind again?

X is now allowing users to sort post replies by Most Relevant (default), Most Recent, and Most Liked. Ever since X Premium launched, which gives blue check mark subscribers priority in replies, users have complained that their post replies were flooded with comments irrelevant to the conversation from premium members. It's unclear how X is determining how to sort posts by Most Relevant, but it appears to be the same sorting method as before, with blue checks still prioritized in the view.

Alibaba's office headquarters in Melbourne, Australia is up for sale, and investors think it could be one of the city's priciest sales of the year, as the building is worth somewhere between $35-$40M. The 411 Collins St building has been owned by a private Melbourne investor since 2020, who has since performed a $6.2M renovation that overhauled the interiors.

Apple changed its policy in the EU to allow developers to communicate with their customers outside of its App Store after the commission charged the company for breaching its new tech rules. Developers will now be able to communicate and promote offers that are available anywhere, not just on their own website, from within the app. However, Apple will introduce two new fees – a 5% acquisition fee for new users and a 10% store service fee for any sales made by app users on any platform within 12 months of installation.

Amazon released an upgraded version of Titan, its in-house AI image generating model. Users can now guide the images they generate using reference images, edit existing visuals, remove backgrounds, and generate variations of images.

Meta is rolling out a new feature that it says is “focused on educating — not publishing” first-time violators of its Facebook Community Standards. Starting with Professional Mode users, the new training will help people learn from their mistakes rather than immediately incurring a formal warning. First time violators will receive a notification to complete an in-app educational training about the policy they violated, which if completed, will remove the warning from their record.

Temu's founder, Colin Huang, has now become China's richest person with a net worth of $48.6B, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He replaced Zhong Shanshan, the founder of the beverage company Nongfu Spring, who has held the title since April 2021.

Uber Advertising's annual revenue run rate surpassed $1B, the company announced during its quarterly earnings call, up from its $650M run rate last year. In June, Uber began selling Journey Ads, which are the in-app ads that run during a user's rideshare, via partnerships with Google, The Trade Desk, and Yahoo. It also partnered with T-Mobile on a deal to sell ads on digital screens inside rideshare vehicles via JourneyTV, which plays on a tablet hanging from the vehicle's headrest.

Shein is considering opening a UK-based warehouse as it continues to pursue a possible IPO on the London Stock Exchange. The company is reportedly seeking a large-scale site between 300k to 600k square feet in the UK's Midlands. Around 10 potential sites have already been toured by members of Shein's team.

10. Seed rounds, IPOs, & acquisitions

Pitney Bowes sold a controlling interest in its Global Ecommerce segment operating in the United States to Hilco Commercial Industrial, which will wind down that business. The move will eliminate nearly all the losses associated with that division, which amounted to $136M in 2023. Pitney Bowes hopes that by streamlining the company this way, it can focus on its three core, cash-generating businesses: SendTech, Presort, and Financial Services. Two weeks ago, I reported that Pitney Bowes sold its e-commerce fulfillment services business to Stord.

Heatmap, a data analytics tool for e-commerce websites that tracks engagement at a granular level, raised $4M in a round led by Vine Ventures, which it will deploy to debut their custom-built AI model that delivers direct recommendations for website improvements. Heatmap boasts that despite investing zero dollars in customer acquisition to date, the company has more than 500 D2C brands on its platform.

Yodel, a UK-based B2B and B2C delivery company, raised £85M from PayPoint, IGF, and several other investors. The company will use the funds to further automate and modernize its business, including rolling out consumer Out of Home deliveries, which is when parcels are delivered to a nearby pick-up locations instead of to the customers' homes.

NuvoRetail, an India-based e-commerce marketing and analytics company, raised $350k from unnamed investors. The company will use the funds to advance its AI-ML driven platform, Enlytical.ai, and support its global expansion plans.

Atlana AI, a New York-based supply chain management startup, raised $200M in a Series C round led by US Innovative Technology Fund, valuing the company at $1B. The platform gives customers deep insights and visibility into managing their global value chains, from the sourcing of raw materials to product and sale, using AI to analyze data points throughout the process to spot anomalies and risks.

Groq, an AI chipmaking startup (not to be confused with Elon Musk's AI chatbot, Grok), raised $640M in a Series D round led by BlackRock, at a $2.8B valuation. Groq makes different kinds of AI hardware than Nvidia, manufacturing language processing units (LPUs), which help established AI models process data faster, whereas Nvidia makes graphics processing units (GPUs), which are more efficient at training new, untrained AI models.