Latest E-commerce News & Updates
Last updated October 29, 2026
Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 5 at $2 per million input tokens, closing the Opus 4.8 gap as enterprises curb AI token costs
Anthropic and OpenAI customers still fear a U.S. kill switch after the undisclosed deal reversing Anthropic’s 18-day export ban
TikTok launches Agentic Hub, an AI Skills marketplace letting agents create and optimize ad campaigns through its Business MCP
Moburst acquires Amazon marketing agency Hyperzon to add marketplace expertise, following an $11.8M Chrysalis investment for M&A
Kappahl Group buys majority stake in Arkivet, Sweden’s leading second-hand chain, in a circular-fashion expansion play
Anthropic launches Claude Science, an AI research workbench for genomics and proteomics, and starts a drug-discovery program
TikTok plans 300 Dublin job cuts and confirms Indonesia layoffs in AI-led restructuring of its trust-and-safety operations
Square launches ChatGPT app and Claude plugin letting restaurants take AI-agent orders with no marketplace fees, undercutting DoorDash and Uber Eats commissions
WhatsApp rolls out reservable usernames globally to hide phone numbers as a core privacy feature, with India ordering Meta to halt it over fraud concerns
Anthropic added a new safeguard rerouting risky Fable 5 requests to a weaker model to win back Trump administration clearance after export controls took it offline
Palantir CEO Alex Karp says OpenAI and Anthropic’s token pricing has “gone completely wrong,” leaving enterprises burning tokens for no return
Kroger acquires family-owned grocery chain Giant Eagle for $1.65B to expand across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, its first major deal since the failed Albertsons merger
Meta names longtime CMO Alex Schultz its first chief data officer overseeing AI analytics, elevating Denise Moreno to marketing chief
Swedish court orders Google to pay Klarna’s PriceRunner nearly $2B for favoring its own comparison-shopping service, the largest such award in Swedish history
Bending Spoons, the AOL and Vimeo owner, jumps 40% in its Nasdaq debut after a $1.68B IPO, reaching a $25.7B market value up from $14.5B in 2025
Friendly fraud is rising for 83% of enterprise merchants over three years and reshaping pricing and policies, according to a Chargebacks911 report
HubSpot acquires AI sales-intelligence startup Warmly to embed website-visitor intent detection and prospect-outreach agents into its CRM
Meta plans a cloud business selling AI computing power and model access under its Meta Compute initiative, taking on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
SoftBank reopens talks for a $10B margin loan against its OpenAI stake, adding a repayment guarantee to ease lender fears over valuing private shares
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