#228 – Blocked tariffs, Amazon’s product purge, & Meta’s fully automated advertising

by Paul Drecksler | Jun 2, 2025 | Recent Newsletters

Hi Shopifreaks

Does Amazon have TOO MANY or TOO FEW products to choose from? Are Trump's tariffs legal? Will businesses trust Meta to create and manage their ad campaigns completely with AI? After reading today's newsletter, you be the judge!

In this week's edition I cover:

Temu's profit plunge
Trump's tariffs get blocked, then unblocked
Amazon purges billions of product listings
Meta's fully AI advertising ambitions
China to regulate marketplace fees
OpenAI's new plan to go for-profit
Meta awaits its antitrust ruling
DHL pre-integrates with Shopify
Brazilians can sell their data
Amazon pulls back on Google Shopping ads
Shein gets a stern warning from the EU
Shopify's chief design officer's grand vision

All this and more in this week's 228th Edition of Shopifreaks. Thanks for subscribing and sharing!

PS: Love this newsletter? Please take a moment to write a Google Review. Your reviews go a long way in helping me reach new readers, so thank you in advance!

Stat of the Week

PDD Holdings, parent of Temu, reported a 38% drop in Q1 2025 profits, citing US tariffs, heightened competition, and expanded merchant support programs. Co-CEO Lei Chen said global policy shifts like tariffs have hurt merchant adaptability, forcing Temu to rethink its supply chain and stop shipping directly from China. The company is prioritizing long-term platform health over short-term gains.

1. Federal court blocked Trump's tariffs… and they're back!

The US Court of International Trade struck down President Trump’s worldwide reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday, ruling that he exceeded his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act — a law that came into effect in 1977 that allows the president to bypass congressional approval and regulate commerce during a declared national emergency involving an unusual and extraordinary foreign threat.

The court, however, found no legal connection between the tariffs and the Trump administration's stated emergency of drug trafficking, halting their enforcement and barring future modifications. The Trump administration was given 10 days to carry out the judges’ orders.

The ruling responded to two separate lawsuits challenging Trump's tariffs — the first filed by a group of state attorneys general and the second filed by five American businesses that rely on goods imported to the US.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai said:

“Foreign countries’ nonreciprocal treatment of the United States has fueled America’s historic and persistent trade deficits. These deficits have created a national emergency that has decimated American communities, left our workers behind, and weakened our defense industrial base – facts that the court did not dispute. It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency.”

Oregon Attorney General and lead plaintiffs in the case Dan Rayfield said:

“[The ruling is] a victory not just for Oregon, but for working families, small businesses, and everyday Americans. President Trump’s sweeping tariffs were unlawful, reckless, and economically devastating. They triggered retaliatory measures, inflated prices on essential goods, and placed an unfair burden on American families, small businesses and manufacturers.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the court's ruling was “consistent with Canada's longstanding position” that Trump's tariffs were unlawful.

Come Thursday, the tariffs are back!

The Trump Administration immediately appealed the decision, and a federal appeals court temporarily reinstated most of Trump's tariffs the next day. The initial ruling would have lowered the overall effective US tariff rate to about 6%, but the appellate court's temporary reinstatement means it will remain at about 15%, according to estimates from Oxford Research.

Trump wrote on social media:

“The horrific decision stated that I would have to get the approval of Congress for these Tariffs. If allowed to stand, this would completely destroy Presidential Power — The Presidency would never be the same! This decision is being hailed all over the World by every Country, other than the United States of America.”

Should President Trump have the authority to issue sweeping tariffs? Is there a legal connection between Trump's tariffs and reducing drug trafficking? Or is that just a pretext to give Trump the power to play God of Tariffs? If you were a judge, what would you have ruled? Hit reply and let me know.

2. Amazon purges billions of product listings

Amazon quietly launched a major internal initiative called “Bend the Curve” to delete billions of underperforming product listings from its marketplace, targeting ASINs that are inactive, have no inventory, or haven’t been updated in years, according to an internal planning document obtained by Business Insider.

The project aims to reduce the number of active listings to under 50B, down from an estimated 74B , while maintaining growth in actual product selection. Amazon says the move is designed to eliminate clutter, improve customer experience, and reduce AWS hosting costs. The company estimates that it saved over $22M on AWS server costs in 2024 alone, and projects to save $36M in 2025.

As part of the effort, Amazon introduced “creation throttling” to restrict large, low-performing seller accounts from adding more listings, affecting around 12,000 sellers and preventing 110M new listings. Some sellers were initially confused, but Amazon insists only unproductive accounts were targeted and has pledged clearer enforcement and communication going forward.

The project reflects CEO Andy Jassy’s broader cost-cutting strategy while trying to preserve Amazon’s reputation as the “Everything Store” — two goals that can be in conflict with one another sometimes. Business Insider sources say that the Bend the Curve project has been hotly debated internally.

Customers have noticed Amazon's shrinking product selection, according to Evercore ISI's annual online retail survey.

In 2022, 84% of respondents said Amazon had the best selection. That figure fell to 79% in 2023, and declined further to 68% in 2024, marking a record low in the survey's 12-year history. It could also simply be that customer's' expectations for product selection have evolved over the past decade.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider that the company is planning to continue to expand its active product listings, the initiative is intended to clean up data, not curtail selection, and that Amazon added millions of new items to its product catalog last year.

3. Meta wants to fully automate advertising with AI by 2026

Meta aims to enable businesses to fully create and target ads using AI by the end of next year, according to Wall Street Journal sources. The company already offers some AI tools that can generate ad variations, and now Meta wants to help brands create advertising concepts from scratch.

Advertising brought in more than 97% of Meta's overall revenue in 2024 and funds the company's AI, metaverse, and hardware ambitions. So the easier and more effective the company can make advertising on its platforms for brands, the more Meta has to gain.

With the ad tools that Meta is developing, a brand could present an image of the product it wants to promote along with a budgetary goal, and AI would create the entire ad, including imagery, video, and text. The system would then decide which Instagram and Facebook users to target and where to place the ads.

Meta also plans to allow advertisers to personalize ads with AI so that users see different versions of the ad in real-time based on their geolocation and other factors (as opposed to having to manually create separate creatives and ad sets). For example, a person in rural Colorado might see an ad for a car driving up a mountain in the snow, while a person in Charlotte, North Carolina might see the same car driving through a city.

Mark Zuckerberg said during the company’s annual shareholder meeting last week:

“In the not-too-distant future, we want to get to a world where any business will be able to just tell us what objective they’re trying to achieve, like selling something or getting a new customer, how much they’re willing to pay for each result, and connect their bank account and then we just do the rest for them.”

Critics are wary of giving Meta more control over their advertising efforts and also worry that AI-generated ads won't have the same look and feel as human-made ads, given that current AI technology often produces distorted or unusable visuals. However Meta says that brands are already using third-party tools like Midjourney and OpenAI's DALL-E to create the ads they place on its platforms, and the company is simply exploring how to integrate those tools to streamline the process.

4. China aims to regulate fees charged by platforms to 3rd party merchants

China’s eCommerce regulator issued draft guidelines for fees that e-commerce marketplaces can charge third-party merchants, saying that online platform should charge reasonable fees while taking into consideration factors like operating costs for the merchants they do business with.

The regulator is calling on platforms to:

Set flexible pricing strategies that adhere to principles of fairness, legality, and good faith for charges like commission, membership, and service fees.
Clearly publicize their fee structures, honor commitments to fee reductions, and avoid unfair practices like duplicate charging or billing without delivering services.
Establish dedicated compliance teams and internal mechanisms to identify and prevent unreasonable charges.
Provide better support to smaller businesses, especially during challenging periods such as natural disasters or public health emergencies.

These proposed regulations are part of a broader effort by Chinese authorities to support local merchants amid economic challenges and to address concerns over non-transparent and complex fee structures on e-commerce platforms. Companies such as Alibaba, JD.com, and PDD Holdings, which operate major online marketplaces, are expected to be impacted by these changes.

Companies have until June 3rd to provide feedback on the draft guidance.

Should US implement similar rules? Or would that be considered over-regulation?

In my opinion, the best way to encourage marketplaces to reduce their fees and provide support to sellers is to introduce COMPETITION into the space. That's where having strong and enforced antitrust regulation can really help shape an industry.

5. OpenAI has a new plan to go for-profit

OpenAI abandoned its plan to spin off its for-profit arm and instead is proposing converting it into a public benefit corporation under its nonprofit's control that would be valued at $300B. Under this new structure, the nonprofit would continue to oversee and control the for-profit arm, however, the latter could issue shares, as well as exchange the profit-sharing units of investors like Microsoft and Thrive Capital for equity.

The nonprofit would continue to own a stake in the for-profit arm, however OpenAI hasn't disclosed what exactly that would be — which is a big question for both state regulators and critics of the restructuring.

Not for Private Gain, a group of lawyers and former OpenAI employees, as well as a coalition of over 60 nonprofits, are arguing that the nonprofit might not get a fair value for its assets under OpenAI's latest proposal and are pressing attorneys general in Delaware and California to investigate the matter fully before giving approval.

In response, the Delaware attorney general hired an investment bank to help assess the value of the nonprofit's assets and determine the stake it should receive in the new public benefit corporation.

Microsoft, which is currently at odds with OpenAI over how much equity it should get in the new public benefit corporation, can also effectively block the conversion, and has hired its own investment banks to advise them on the process.

Then there's Elon Musk, who has entered into litigation to block the conversion in court, of which the case is set to go to trial next year.

OpenAI is pressed for time.

If the company doesn't complete the process by the end of the year, it risks losing up to $20B in funding from SoftBank. And OpenAI needs that cash to continue funding its expansion, which includes creating new AI models, shipping 100M AI companion devices beginning next year, and building out a global network of data centers as part of its Stargate infrastructure project.

6. Meta awaits a ruling in its FTC antitrust trial

The seven-week trial between Meta and the FTC has ended, and a decision now rests in US District Judge James Boasberg's hands as to whether Meta holds an illegal monopoly in social media.

The FTC claims that Meta's purchases of Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 were intended to reduce competition and strengthen its dominance in personal social networking — and it brought lots of proof to the table, including e-mails from Mark Zuckerberg that just about say that. If the FTC wins, Meta might have to sell one or both platforms.

Meta denies the allegations that it's a monopoly and claims that it faces strong competition from TikTok, YouTube, and iMessage, among others. The company also argues that its services compete in various sectors beyond just social networking like entertainment and commerce.

Judge Boasberg says the key question he must answer is how to define social media, which has changed rapidly over the past decade as platforms have branched out into entertainment, gaming, and commerce.

A senior FTC. official said in a press call last week:

“This case presents a very important legal principle, which is that a firm that is a monopolist cannot acquire its most threatening competitors. Antitrust law requires competition on the merits, even in digital markets, and it’s competition on the merits that drives innovation and ultimately helps consumers.”

Both sides will have the chance to file follow-up briefings this summer. Judge Boasberg said he would work “expeditiously” to issue an opinion.

7. DHL becomes a pre-integrated shipping partner with Shopify

DHL is now a pre-integrated partner on Shopify's shipping platform in the US and Germany, with plans to expand to other major markets in the Americas, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region by 2026. For merchants in the USA, it also brings “Delivered Duty Paid” shipping as a native feature, a service which protects consumers from unexpected additional fees such as customs charges or import sales tax.

DHL joins USPS, which offers up to 88% off shipping rates, and UPS, which advertises up to 83% off rates, as a Shopify pre-integrated shipping partner, advertising up to 80% international shipping from DHL Express to over 220 countries and territories. Noticeably absent from that list is FedEx, who I guess is too busy servicing packages from their non-competitor Amazon to strike a deal with Shopify.

Game changer for merchants? Not quite, as any merchant who wanted to ship with DHL could have done so already through a shipping partner like ShipBob or Shipstation, or by using DHL Express' official Shopify app.

It's DHL who has the most to gain from the partnership, as they've now become a native option for merchants that don't have an existing relationship with the carrier, which means those merchants can print DHL shipping labels directly through Shopify without a DHL account.

8. Brazil lets citizens earn money from selling their personal data

Brazil is piloting a digital wallet program called dWallet that lets citizens earn money from their personal data. Through dWallets, users can accept bids from companies on their data, receive payment, and transfer funds to bank accounts.

Last year, the country announced that it is rolling out a data ownership pilot that will allow Brazilians to manage, own, and profit from their digital footprint, marking the first initiative of its kind in the world. The project is administered by Dataprev, a state-owned company that provides tech solutions for Brazil's social programs, and DrumWave, a California-based data valuation and monetization firm.

The pilot includes a small group Brazilians who will use data wallets to apply for payroll loans. Once the users give permission for the lenders to collect data in the wallets, the companies will be able to view the information and then bid on the loan.

Advocates say: The initiative can lay the foundation for a data ownership model that puts power back into consumers' hands to control their data, redefining the digital economy.

Critics say: The project could pressure vulnerable people into giving up their privacy for a quick payout. It could also raise the price of data for business, making it inaccessible for smaller companies and state offices with low budgets.

Pedro Bastos, a researcher at Data Privacy Brazil, told Rest of World:

“We will be asking half of the country that doesn’t know how to read to decide if their data can be bought for a certain fee. People in situations of vulnerability will say yes, and this might be used against them.”

The catch-22 for Brazilians is that the poorest people in the country likely have the least valuable data to sell due to their spending patterns, while wealthier consumers, who have the most valuable data, are less likely to sell it because the payout would be insignificant to them.

Would you sell your data if you had control over it? What would it be worth to you? Hit reply and let me know.

9. Other e-commerce news of interest

Amazon significantly pulled back its ad presence across Google Shopping during the past week, marking its most notable retreat since 2020 when it paused ads for nearly three months at the start of the pandemic. Tinuiti data shows that Amazon's daily impression share dropped sharply, which could signal a strategic pivot or larger market dynamics at play. Tinuiti also noted that Walmart's presence in Google auctions diminished in the last month, but not as dramatically, however, seeing large swings in Walmart's share of Google Shopping impressions isn't as unusual.

The European Union warned Shein that several of its practices violate the region's consumer protection laws, including the retailer offering “fake discounts,” pressuring customers into completing purchases with phony deadlines, and using deceptive product labels to trick users into thinking an item comes with special characters when “the relevant feature is required by law.” Shein was told that it needs to bring its practices in line with the law or face a fine.

Temu was featured at Google I/O 2025 as an early adopter of Google's new Web UI primitives, which are a set of Web UI APIs designed to improve interactivity, performance, and responsiveness in web applications. The platform was was presented as a case study for implementing these technologies to deliver a more dynamic and engaging digital shopping experience, for example, by using carousels, tooltips, and dropdown menus to create more seamless and responsive user experiences.

Shopify's new Chief Design Officer, Carl Rivera, described his future vision for the platform as “an interface where you can quickly shift between talking, typing, clicking, and even drawing to instruct software, like moving around a whiteboard in a dynamic conversation. An experience in which users are not presented with a barrage of nested menus, but with a blank canvas that invites creativity aided by an artificial intelligence that knows everything there is to know about online and brick-and-mortar retail and marketing.” He went on to say that “by the end of this year, we'll have made a ton more progress. And by the end of next year, we'll be pretty science fiction-like.”

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. championed Bitcoin and decentralized finance at the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, promoting their family's World Liberty Fi platform and slamming traditional banks. The brothers cited being “debanked” as their entry point into crypto and criticized the current financial system as invasive and outdated. Their appearance followed Vice President J.D. Vance’s pro-crypto remarks, highlighting the Trump administration’s active embrace of digital assets.

Poshmark is the latest marketplace to take advantage of Meta's new Facebook Marketplace Partnership program, testing things out in the US with a small number of listings to start. Select Poshmark listings now appear on Facebook clearly designated as Marketplace Partner listings with a “check out with Poshmark” button that takes the user to Poshmark's website to complete the purchase. Meta launched the partnership program earlier this year in response to antirust scrutiny in Europe and the US, first partnering with eBay before expanding to other marketplaces.

Temu and Shein are gaining ground in Europe with Temu's year-over-year sales in the region surging more than 60% in early May and Shein growing 50% in the UK, according to data from Consumer Edge. Both companies have slashed ad budgets in the US and ramped up digital advertising in European markets, primarily in France and the UK. However in absolute terms, US consumers still make up the majority share of both retailers' revenue.

Anthropic hit $3B in annualized revenue, up from $1B in December 2024, according to two Reuters sources. The figure crossed $2B at the end of March, and hit $3B at the end of May. The surge is largely from selling AI models as a service to other companies, primarily its code generation software. In comparison, OpenAI has projected t will end 2025 with more than $12B in total revenue, up from $3.7B last year.

Speaking of AI popping off… MetaAI now has one billion monthly active users across its apps, according to Mark Zuckerberg, doubling the 500M monthly active users it had in September 2024. Zuckerberg said at the company's annual shareholder meeting that the “focus for this year is deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI with an emphasis on personalization, voice conversations and entertainment,” adding that Meta's plan is to keep building out the AI assistant before creating a business around it.

Google's not letting Meta have all the fun though. Last week Google released an app called Google AI Edge Gallery that lets users run a range of publicly available AI models from the AI dev platform Hugging Face on their phones. The app allows users to find, download, and run compatible models that generate images, answer questions, write and edit code, and perform other tasks completely offline by tapping into the phone's processor.

Block is launching Bitcoin for Businesses, a feature that enables Square merchants to accept BTC payments via the Lightning Network, a decentralized network that uses blockchain smart contracts for instant, low-cost payments. The feature builds on its existing Bitcoin Conversions tool, which allows merchants to automatically convert a portion of sales into bitcoin and offer QR code payments.

Victoria's Secret temporarily shut down its e-commerce site for three days last week during a cyber attack. The company declined to answer questions about a possible ransomware infection, the timeline of the problems, or whether it has asked police to investigate, however, the site appears to be operational again as of Friday. In the last six weeks, three major UK retail chains including Marks and Spencer, Harrods, and the Co-op have all suffered attacks.

Amazon and The New York Times entered into a multi-year licensing agreement that allows Amazon to access much of the publication's editorial content for AI-related uses such as training its AI models and accessing summaries of its content using Alexa. The New York Times previously sued OpenAI and Microsoft for training their models on the company's content without permission back in 2023, but the case is still ongoing.

Last year one basic bitch sued another basic bitch for copying her style on social media. Amazon influencer Sydney Nicole Gifford accused Alyssa Sheil of copying her aesthetic to sell the same Amazon products, citing dozens of similar posts, while Sheil denied the claims and presented data showing that some of her posts predated Gifford's. The two influencers have now asked the judge to dismiss the closely watched copyright lawsuit, with no money exchanging hands in the resolution. Gifford finally spoke out on social media about the case, showing some of her evidence, and it's pretty damning! Watch the video and decide for yourself whether the lawsuit had merit.

Meta is reorganizing its gen-AI team into two groups — one team to oversee the company’s AI research and another to handle its consumer AI products. The products team will be responsible for the Meta AI Assistant, AI Studio, and AI features within Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, while the other team will oversee the company's Llama models, as well as efforts to improve capabilities in reasoning, multimedia and voice. The reorganization aims to streamline operations and clarify roles, enhancing Meta's competitive edge by allowing it to accelerate rollouts of products and features.

In layoffs this week… eBay is shutting down its R&D operations in Israel, with over 200 employees losing their jobs by Q1 2026. TikTok is eliminating several hundred jobs in Indonesia in its latest round of cuts, slashing costs after taking over Tokopedia operations last year. IBM laid off nearly 8,000 employees, with the HR department affected the most, attributing the cuts to AI deployment that can virtually handle the department's operations. LinkedIn announced 281 layoffs across California including software engineers, product managers, deal desk strategists, and designers. Last but not least, Business Insider laid off about one fifth of its workforce across all departments, with plans to embrace AI to help the remaining staff “work faster, smarter, and better.”

Japan Post launched a new “digital address” system that links seven-digit combinations of numbers and letters to physical addresses. Under the new system, users can input these codes on online shopping websites and their addresses will automatically appear on the sites. The digital addresses are permanent and will not change even if the person moves. Rakuten and other platforms are considering adopting the system soon.

India's government has called major e-commerce platforms including Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy, Zomato, Apple, and Meta for a meeting to push for stronger measures against dark patterns and to discuss penal actions for violations. India officials said that the government's approach is not to punish innovation, but to “ensure that technology does not come at the cost of consumer exploitation.” In November 2023, the Department of Consumer Affairs issued detailed guidelines on dark patterns, which was followed by the launch of a Dark Patterns Buster Hackathon, inviting tech solutions to detect and prevent such practices.

An Amazon delivery drone crash landed in the middle of an apartment complex in Tolleson, Arizona last Wednesday, just a few weeks after the company launched its Prime Air Drone Delivery service in the city. Luckily no-one was around when the drone went down and no-one was harmed in the accident. Amazon's Prime Air drone delivery program has experienced multiple crashes during its testing phases, with at least eight crashes reported between 2021 and 2022, including an incident in June 2021 where a drone crash sparked a 22-acre fire in Oregon. In December 2024, two MK30 drones crashed during test flights in Oregon due to faulty altitude readings caused by a software update that increased the sensitivity of their lidar sensors.

German courts ruled that websites in the country must now provide an equally visible “reject all” button on cookie consent banners if offering an “accept all” option. The decision aims to curb manipulative designs that pressure users into consenting to cookies and reinforces that manipulative cookie banners violate GDPR and national privacy laws. The case sets a precedent mandating fairer digital consent practices and greater transparency for data processing online.

Amazon Fire Sticks and hardware from Microsoft, Google, and Facebook are enabling “billions of dollars” worth of streaming piracy, according to a report from media research firm Enders Analysis. The report points to the availability of multiple, simultaneous illegal streams for big events that draw tens of thousands of pirate viewers and places blame on Facebook for showing advertisements for access to illegal streams, as well as Google and Microsoft for the alleged “continued depreciation” of their digital rights management systems. Nick Herm, COO of Comcast-owned Sky Group, estimated that piracy is costing the company hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and that Fire Sticks account for about half of the piracy in the UK.

Amazon is facing scrutiny again for selling over 100k kitchen faucets that were recalled for containing dangerous levels of lead. In the past few months, the company has been caught selling facial recognition tech to police departments, AI-generated books on managing ADHD, rice contaminated with arsenic and other heavy metals, and concentrated sodium nitrate that led to the death of a teenager. Historically Amazon has dodged liability for third-party sales, but a 2023 Consumer Product Safety Commission ruling now holds the company responsible for unsafe FBA items.

Duolingo's CEO Luis von Ahn retracted his claim that AI will replace the company's human workforce, saying now that AI should be treated as a tool to help employees rather than supplant them. The week prior, Duolingo said it would “gradually stop using contractors to do work AI can handle,” which led to tremendous backlash, with many users canceling their subscriptions or deleting their accounts. The company abruptly deleted all of its posts on social media to avoid the backlash, and then followed up with a cryptic video that aimed to separate itself (the social media team?) from its corporate leadership. Check out my conspiracy theory on LinkedIn, where I postulate how the company faked a data breach to inflate its monthly average user count.

Sorry short kings… Tinder launched a new feature that lets paid subscribers add their height preferences to their profiles. (Good thing it's impossible to lie about your height!) The company says that the setting will indicate a preference, rather than functioning as a “hard filter,” which means it won't actually block or exclude profiles, but simply inform recommendations. One Reddit user commented, “It's the only way they're going to get women to pay for the service too,” while another user wrote, “gotta add the weight and single mom filter now.”

Shopify was ranked the number one brand advertising on Australian podcasts for Q1 2025, according to a report by ARN's iHeart and Magellan AI, signaling the company's increased efforts to tap into the Australian market. As of Q2 2024, Australia hosts over 115k Shopify stores, including more than 2,300 Shopify Plus stores, representing 32% YoY growth. Other e-commerce companies on the list include Wise (#5), Airbnb (#6), Squarespace (#7), and American Express (#13).

24% of BNPL users in the US were behind on payments in 2024, up from 18% in 2023, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve. Low-income borrowers were the most likely to miss payments, with 40% of users earning less than $25,000 a year reporting a delinquency. More than half of BNPL users said they would not otherwise have been able to afford their purchases if it weren't for the installment payment option.

🏆 This week's most ridiculous story… former Facebook executive Nick Clegg insisted during an arts festival last weekend that it's “implausible” to ask tech companies to ask for consent from creators before using their work to train their AI models. He said, “I just don't know how you go around, asking everyone first,” and noted that if AI companies were required only in Britain to gain permission to use copyright holders' works, “you would basically kill the AI industry in this country overnight.” I call BS on that one! Sure it would cost AI companies some upfront capital to obtain consent and pay copyright holders, but we're talking about a very small slice of the pie. It's been estimated that it only would have cost Meta around $150M to buy a copy of each of the 7.5M books it pirated to train its LLM.

10. Seed rounds, IPOs, & acquisitions

Grammarly, a San Francisco-based AI-powered writing assistant that helps users improve grammar, clarity, and tone in real time, raised $1B in non-dilutive financing from General Catalyst, bringing its total amount raised to more than $1.55B. The fresh funds will enable the company to grow its AI offering, expand into new products, and ramp up marketing (as if we don't see enough of their ads already). Grammarly boasts over 40M daily users and is already profitable, generating over $700M in annual revenue.

Portless, a direct-from-manufacturer logistics startup that ships from facilities close to manufacturers in China, Vietnam, and soon India, raised $18M in a Series A round led by Commerce Ventures. The company offers Western brands the opportunity to use a shipping and fulfillment model made popular by Shein, using an informal entry process called Type 11 to import the goods to the US, while paying duties on behalf of its brand customers.

Velocity, a London-based platform where business can manage fiat and stablecoin transactions in one place, emerged from stealth with a $10M pre-seed funding round led by Activant Capital to launch its Stablecoin Payment Account. The startup aims to target the inefficiencies of traditional cross-border finance by integrating fiat and stablecoin infrastructure into a single enterprise-grade platform designed to solve pain points in liquidity, settlement, and treasury operations with the speed and programmability of stablecoins.

Sweep, an agentic workspace that brings business and technical teams into one visual layer, allowing AI agents to document changes, analyze metadata, and surface system improvements in real-time, raised $22.5M in a Series B round led by Insight Partners, bringing its total amount raised to over $45M. The platform continuously monitors systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, and NetSuite, flags issues before they become problems, and recommends or implements improvements automatically, without teams having to wait on tickets or audits.

e.l.f. Beauty, a California-based cosmetics company known for offering affordable, cruelty-free makeup and skincare products, acquired Rhode, a skincare brand founded by Hailey Bieber that offers a curated line of minimalist, hydrating skincare products, for $1B, split into $800M paid upfront via cash and stock and $200M if Rhode hits key growth milestones in the next three years. Bieber will step into the role of Chief Creative Officer and Head of Innovation, leading the brand's creative direction, product innovation, and market strategy, while serving as a strategic advisor to the combined companies.

Pallet, a Los Angeles-based supply chain logistics platform that connects freight brokers, carriers, and shippers to optimize transportation management, raised $27M in a Series B round led by General Catalyst. The company has developed CoPallet, an AI workforce for logistics, and plans to use the funds to expand its product and engineering teams and scale its new product to meet the needs of its customer base across freight brokers, third party logistics providers, freight forwarders, carriers, and shippers.

Slikk, an Indian fashion delivery platform that offers 60-minute deliveries for apparel brands, raised $10M in a Series A round led by Nexus Venture Partners. The company will use the funds to launch new lifestyle categories, rollout instant returns, and expand into more geographic areas.

Shein's initial public offering in London failed to get the green light from Chinese regulators, and now the company is working towards a listing in Hong Kong, according to three sources. Shein aims to file a draft prospectus with Hong Kong's stock exchange in the coming weeks, with plans to go public within the year.

KiranaPro, an Indian ONDC-integrated quick commerce platform, acquired Likeo, an AR startup specializing in virtual try-on technology, in an all-stock deal valued at $1M. The acquisition will integrate virtual try-on rooms into BLACK, KiranaPro's fashion-focused shopping app designed for Gen Z consumers.

Bloq.it, a Portuguese smart locker company that provides hardware and software solutions for last-mile delivery, click-and-collect, and parcel logistics, raised €28M in a Series B round, marking one of the country's largest Series B rounds to date. The fund swill be put towards accelerating team expansion and launching operations in new European markets, as well as to drive M&A strategies.

Misfits Market, a New Jersey-based online grocery delivery service that sells surplus and imperfect food products at discounted prices, acquired The Rounds, a Pennsylvanian restocking and delivery startup that provides eco-friendly, zero-waste household essentials on a recurring subscription basis, for an undisclosed amount. The deal marks Misfits Market's second acquisition in three years, following its integration of Imperfect Foods in 2022, and furthers the company's mission to reduce waste and inefficiency in the food supply chain.

Tendo, a Ghana-based startup that empowers individuals to start and expand online businesses without upfront capital by linking them to suppliers, acquired Shopa, another Ghana-based startup that focuses on enhancing fast-moving consumers goods distribution via its platform that links retailers directly to suppliers and manufactures. Following the acquisition, Shopa will be rebranded as Tendo Retail, a new division within the company dedicated to equipping informal distributors across Africa with technology to grow their businesses.

Omada Health, a San Francisco-based digital care provider that delivers behavior change programs for chronic conditions like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity, plans to raise up to $158M in its upcoming IPO at a $1.1B valuation. The company filed its prospectus earlier this month and just updated the filing with an expected pricing range of $18 and $20 per share, with plans to sell 7.9M shares in the offering.

BloomNation, a Santa Monica-based online floral marketplace that enables local florists to sell flowers and gifts to customers, acquired Floom, a UK-based online marketplaces for unique, handcrafted arrangements delivered by local artisans, for an undisclosed amount, marking BloomNation's first expansion into Europe. The acquisition will integrate Floom's marketplace with BloomNation's suite of services including custom websites, point-of-sale systems, and marketing tools, but the company will continue to operate independently.

Williams-Sonoma, a San Francisco-based specialty retailer of high-quality home products, acquired the IP of Dormify, a bankrupt online retailer and content platform for college students moving into dormitories, for an undisclosed amount, with plans to relaunch the brand in 2026. Williams-Sonoma is aggressively moving into the college market, having recently debuted Dorm Concierge, a complementary, personalized service designed to assist customers shopping for dorm products, and Dorm Shop, a curated retail storefront in collaboration with Pottery Barn.