#215 – Haul goes global, Alexa+, & Amazon Native Commerce Advertising

by Shopifreaks | Mar 3, 2025 | Recent Newsletters

Hi Shopifreaks

Last year a reader wrote me and said, “I thought this was a Shopify-focused newsletter, but I haven't seen Shopify news in weeks?”

First off, despite the name — Shopifreaks is NOT a Shopify-focused newsletter. I cover all the major e-commerce companies equally.

However, regardless of that, I replied honestly, “That's just the way the cookie crumbles in regards to news. Sometimes Shopify news dominates entire editions. Other times it's all quiet on the Shopify front for weeks at a time (which I think is strategic by Shopify, but that's a different conversation).”

The same goes for all the major e-commerce players. News runs in cycles, and sometimes one player dominates the news cycle in any given week.

That being said… get ready for a very Amazon-focused edition this week!

In this week's edition I cover:

Amazon Haul goes global
Alexa+ was worth the wait
Amazon Native Commerce Advertising
Meta AI & Reels get their own apps
TikTok's new desktop experience
The new TikTok One platform
BigCommerce doubles down on B2B
Meta's $50M Creator Fund
Flipkart shuts down ANS Commerce
DoorDash stole driver tips
AI.com's $100M asking price

All this and more in this week's 215th Edition of Shopifreaks. Thanks for subscribing and sharing!

PS: Love this newsletter? Please take a moment and leave a review on Google!

Stat of the Week

80 of the world's 250 largest e-commerce companies have their headquarters in USA. Germany holds a distant second place with 22 company headquarters, followed by France and UK with 17 each.

1. Amazon goes global with its direct-from-China marketplace

Amazon is going global with Haul, its bargain basement marketplace that launched in November in the US to compete with Temu, Shein, and other low-cost direct-from-China marketplaces.

Amazon's plan is to expand Haul to countries in Europe this year, according to a seller consultant who spoke with Amazon representatives. A recent job posting also indicated efforts to launch Haul in Mexico as part of a broader global expansion.

Listings for Haul-related jobs from February said that the 2025 goals of the company's S-Team, a group of 29 executives including CEO Andy Jassy and retail chief Doug Herrington, include making Haul “Go Big” in the US and launching worldwide this year in a move that would put Haul in direct competition with Temu in potentially more than 100 countries where the Chinese marketplace operates.

Expanding Haul globally would be a fairly easy and cost effective way for the company to compete with Temu and Shein, since there isn't any fulfillment logistics involved in the launch for Amazon. The entirety of the move of opening up Haul to other countries would be digital. From there, the Chinese manufacturers that Amazon work with would be responsible for fulfillment — which I'd imagine most already ship to countries other than the US.

In comparison, when Amazon opens a traditional marketplace in new countries, it has to invest a substantial amount in warehouses, fulfillment centers, and other logistic operations in order to offer same-day and next-day delivery (which Haul doesn't promise).

Outside of the US, Amazon currently operates marketplaces in Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Netherlands, Ireland, Sweden, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Japan, Singapore, India, and China –so likely we would see Haul expand to these countries first (less China for obvious reasons). However beyond that initial push, since no domestic logistics are involved for Amazon, there'd be little stopping them from rapidly expanding to additional countries where they don't already have a traditional marketplace open.

2. The wait for Alexa+ may have been worth it…

At an event in New York City last week, Amazon presented the long awaited next generation of its Alexa assistant — creatively known as Alexa+.

Alexa+ is based on four pillars, according to the company:

Conversational – to feel more natural and not like a traditional electronic assistant.
Personalized – engineered to understand your individual needs and learn new ones as they arise.
Action-Oriented – it can act on your behalf, for example by shopping and making plans for you.
Smarter – designed to be knowledgeable and approachable for users.

Here's what else we know about Alexa+:

Alexa+ is based on generative AI and a more natural conversational UI, the goal being for users to move away from “Alexa Speak” towards a new type of conversational engagement that feels more natural and expressive.
Users will be able to do things via voice commands like shift music being played from one room to another, query video recordings for things like package deliveries and letting pets out, skip to specific scenes in movies, and even send event invites.
Users can build shopping lists, tapping into services like Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods apps to make ordering easier.
Users will also be able to bring their own recipes into Alexa+ to make shopping for meals easier.
Amazon says that Alexa+ can tap into “tens of thousands” of other services and devices to take actions for customers, including with OpenTable, Dyson, Plex, Samsung, Xbox, and Hulu.
For online services that don't have API, Alexa+ should be able to visit and navigate their websites on your behalf, similar to OpenAI Operator.
Overtime, Alexa+ should be able to learn which apps to use based on the users' profile and specific intent.
Alexa+ will cost $19.99/month if subscribed to by itself, or it'll be provided free to Amazon Prime users, which makes Prime a no brainer at $139/year if a customer wanted to access Alexa+.
Early access will begin in March exclusively in the US, beginning with the Echo Show 8, 10, 15, and 21 devices.
Amazon is refreshing the alexa.com website and the Alexa mobile app so that Alexa+ subscribers will be able to use the service via those channels in addition to their Echo devices.

Amazon VP of Alexa and Fire TV, Daniel Rausch, told WIRED, “The reason that customers love Alexa is it takes away all the complexity.” People don't need to remember the brand of the WeMo plug they bought, for example, to be able to tell Alexa to turn off a lamp. “We would never take that away,” and in fact, Amazon hopes to make adding new services and devices even easier, with Alexa helping to walk you through the setups.

Amazon may be late to the gen AI assistant party, but it's intimate knowledge of its customers purchase history and homes, its existing relationship with tens of thousands of APIs, and its direct placement into the homes of millions of customers via Echo devices, may mean that Alexa+ was worth the wait. We'll find out soon…

3. Amazon is paying publishers to refer traffic

Amazon is testing a new way to pay publishers for driving traffic to its marketplaces in a pilot program called “native commerce advertising” or “NCA.” Through the program, the publisher earns money when it sends readers to Amazon product recommendations, regardless of whether they end up buying a product or not, according to Business Insider sources.

As most of you are aware, Amazon was one of the first online retailers to offer an affiliate program (Amazon Associates), which pays a commission on sales generated from referred traffic. The key difference between Associates and NCA is that the former only pays for sales, whereas the latter is paying for traffic on a cost-per-click basis, regardless of if it generates any sales.

CNN, Vox Media, and Future are among the small group of publishers participating in the NCA pilot, which Amazon plans to expand this year with more publishers. Amazon is pitching NCA as a way for publishers to make additional money on top of its Associates program, which means publishers can enroll in both programs simultaneously and earn on both clicks and sales.

One participating publisher told Business Insider that the program was complicated to implement and that cost per click varied widely, with rates ranging from $0.20 to $0.60, however, that's fair of most CPC programs, and NCA is just getting started.

Ready for some speculation? This is all in preparation for the domination of Amazon Retail Ad Service, which lets other retailers use Amazon's advertising technology to showcase ads on their own websites. I predict that NCA is being built as an extension of Retail Ad Service — creating new ad inventory on publisher websites, as opposed to just retail sites, which RAS currently caters to.

Currently with Amazon Associates, the publisher has complete control over which products appear on their website because they are hand selected. Whereas with NCA, the display ads are controlled by Amazon. This will allow them to sell these display ads to other brands and retailers and display them on publisher websites without direct involvement from the publisher.

Smart moves, Amazon.

4. Meta AI & Meta Reels are getting their own standalone apps

Meta is planning to debut a standalone AI app during the next few months, according to CNBC sources, as well as test a paid subscription service for Meta AI that would offer advanced features and access to the company's latest LLMs.

The Meta AI chatbot originally launched in September 2023, and in April 2024, the company made it front and center in its apps by replacing the search feature for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger with the AI chatbot.

Now Meta plans to offer its AI chatbot as a standalone app, in hopes that new and existing users interact more deeply with it.

Honestly, it's not a bad idea on Meta's part to decouple its AI from its social and messaging apps, as users tend to interact with AI differently than with social apps. For example, I typically open WhatsApp with a specific intention to read or send messages. Whereas I access OpenAI to do research or ask questions. Having a standalone Meta AI app would allow Meta to offer advanced research and project management features without interfering with the UI and native features of their social and messaging apps.

Shortly after this story about a standalone Meta AI app was published, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in an X post, “ok fine maybe we’ll do a social app.”

Additionally, rumors are circulating that Meta is considering breaking off Reels into a separate app from Instagram to better compete with TikTok, and ideally bring back much of what users loved about the old Instagram (before it tried to become a TikTok clone).

Instagram’s efforts to compete with TikTok are part of an initiative code-named Project Ray, which includes improving recommendations for users and distributing more three-minute-long videos, according to The Information sources.

A dedicated Reels app could create a more native TikTok-like, swipeable, video-focused experience for users who want to engage more with short-form video content. However let's be real — it's all about creating a new advertising platform for Meta.

5. TikTok revamps its desktop experience

TikTok unveiled a new web-based experience that features:

Modular Design – featuring a repositioned navigation bar and a more immersive viewing experience that expands to fill the height of your browser.
LIVE Game Streaming – available in portrait or landscape mode, allowing desktop users to view a full-screen horizontal view.
Floating Video Player – a flexible floating window that keeps TikTok visible above other windows, available exclusively on desktop via Google Chrome. This works great! Now I can write Shopifreaks and watch TikTok at the same time from my browser. LOL. I wish they offered this for mobile devices too, so that I can continue viewing TikTok and use other apps in the background.
New Collections Feature – allows users to organize their favorite videos into custom categories so that it's easier to find and revisit saved content later (similar to YouTube Playlists).

Given that TikTok's floating video player is exclusive to Google Chrome, it makes me wonder why YouTube doesn't offer similar functionality. Should we expect that soon?

So what's this new desktop experience all about?

Matene Toure of ZDNet wrote that the desktop updates “suggest that the app is vying to encroach on Twitch and YouTube's dominance in the game streaming market.”

However, might this also have to do with the pending TikTok ban? We're already more than halfway through the 75 day lifeline that Trump gave the app, but it doesn't seem that TikTok is any closer to a sale then when Biden was still in office. If inevitably, a deal can't be reached to sell 50% of TikTok US to an American company, and the app gets removed again from Google Play and Apple App Store, a refreshed desktop version (which also works via mobile web browser) could keep TikTok alive with its US viewers.

6. TikTok sunsets its Creator Marketplace for its new TikTok One

In other TikTok news this week… TikTok is sunsetting Creator Marketplace, its platform that connects brands with content creators for paid collaborations and sponsored content that it launched in 2019, on April 1st, to be replaced with its new TikTok One platform.

TikTok One will offer brands the same ability to connect with creators, as well as provide new tools to help creators find inspiration, research trends, and connect with other experts for help with “native-looking” TikTok videos for their ad campaigns.

The platform includes a trend tracker as well as tools for discovering top user-generated content, creators, hashtags, and songs, alongside tips on how to use TikTok creative tools, ad products, and business accounts.

TikTok One also replaces access to older tools — like TikTok's Video Generator tool with its new AI-powered Symphony Creative Studio, which offers a suite of features aimed at helping creators bring their video ideas to life, as well as a Script Generator that helps advertisers create engaging video scripts for short-form video.

Ahead of the shutdown of Creator Marketplace, TikTok is encouraging advertisers to migrate their data to the new TikTok One platform.

7. BigCommerce doubles down on its B2B e-commerce

BigCommerce is doubling down on its B2B e-commerce strategy, according to its CEO Travis Hess, who has led the company since October 2024, after previously having served as President since May that year.

Hess claims that BigCommerce now has 12,000 B2B accounts, making it “one of the largest, if not the largest B2B SaaS player in market,” and that half of the company's net new bookings in 2024 came from B2B.

He also shared that BigCommerce has integrated its operations and restructured into three clear offering groups: B2C, B2B, and Small Business.

Hess told DigitalCommerce360:

“We have integrated all three products both operationally and commercially and have organized the teams around three offering groups. We have a dedicated general manager over each of these three offerings, and our sales and marketing teams are now aligned with these offerings, rather than exclusively by product.”

Why separate Small Business from B2C and B2B? Don't most small businesses fit perfectly into one or both of those categories?

I love the idea of dividing their offering into two distinct categories — B2B and B2C — but I would simply communicate to businesses of all sizes — including small, medium, and enterprise — a simple streamlined offering under each category.

Eight months ago I published a popular LinkedIn post that offered my views on how BigCommerce should change its marketing. Part of my advice included:

“Build for enterprise, speak to the masses / Combine the Enterprise & Essentials pages” — meaning the benefits should be equally clear to both small businesses and enterprises, most of which overlap between the two segments.
“Lose the ‘E' in e-commerce” — meaning focus on how BigCommerce is an omnichannel commerce provider that powers a retailers presence across all channels including D2C, marketplace, social, and brick-and-mortar.
“Talk about BigCommerce's offering cohesively” — as opposed to hiding major benefits behind product pages. Just because their dev team packages BigCommerce's offerings into individual products with names like B2B Edition, Launch Services, and Multi-Storefront doesn't mean the marketing division has to sell each one individually.

I think that streamlining their offering into B2C and B2B is a good first step towards streamlining and improving their communication of features & benefits to merchants, but they've still got a long way to go in regards to their website. It's still early in the year and I'm rooting for a major BigCommerce comeback story in 2025!

What are your thoughts? Hit reply and let me know.

8. Meta launched a $50M Creator Fund

Meta launched a $50M Creator Fund for developers building games for its online virtual space Horizon Worlds. The company says it will make payouts each month to developers based on factors like engagement, retention, and in-world purchases.

The company also noted that Meta Horizon Creator Program members can increase earnings through in-world purchases, which will expand to 18 more countries.

As part of the initiative, Meta introduced its first creator competition of the year — offering a $1M mobile-focused contest. Starting on March 11th, the “Mobile Genre Showdown” themed contest will reward 30 creators for building innovative mobile experiences in Horizon Worlds.

Meta wrote in a blog post:

“By investing in mobile content, we can reach a lot of new people who don’t yet own a Quest headset and ultimately grow the pie for everyone. That’s why, as part of our $50 million Creator Fund for creators of mobile and MR worlds, we’re also announcing our first creator competition of the year with a focus on mobile.”

Lastly, Meta expanded access to its desktop editor, which maps to traditional 2D and 3D app development workflows, letting developers build new worlds on their PC. The desktop editor features tools like sound effects and ambient audio generation and TypeScript generation to help reduce manual coding for developers.

9. Other e-commerce news of interest

Nearly 400 tech leaders signed an open letter condemning Shopify for cutting its diversity programs and urging Canada's tech ecosystem to protect equity, inclusion, and diversity efforts. The letter warns against the growing influencer of unelected and unaccountable business leaders who “prioritize profit over people,” and calls on Canadians to uphold the values of inclusion that are being challenged in the US. Last week, Shopify removed the web pages of several diversity and social programs from its site — Build Native, Build Black, Social Impact and Empowered by Shopify — and many employees formerly connected to those divisions no longer work at the company, according to their LinkedIn.

Shopify listed a US address alongside its Canadian headquarters for the first time in an annual regulatory SEC filing, naming both its Lafayette Street hub in New York and its O'Connor Street site in Ottawa as “principal executive offices” in the filing. Annual filings made with the SEC dating back to 2017 have only listed the Ottawa location and were typically made under the foreign issuer 40-F designation rather than the domestic issuer 10-K that Shopify used this month. TD Cowen analyst Peter Haynes predicts that the move was meant to help Shopify gain membership to certain US indexes, but Shopify spokesperson Alex Lyons instead positioned it as a voluntary way to align the company's disclosures with its software peers.

eBay updated its platform to make it easier to identify items with fast delivery via search item cards that display delivery range estimates for all fast shipping items. It also added a “shipping and pickup” filter that allows customers to find items available for local pickup. Congrats eBay on releasing two features that could've and should've existed a decade ago!

commercetools laid off 10% of its workforce, or around 68 workers, after failing to meet its sales growth targets. The company is also making executive changes including parting ways with its chief revenue officer and CFO and reassigning the roles previously held by its chief information security and compliance officer.

Google is also making more cuts, this time to its “People Operations” (the dumb name for its HR division) and cloud organizations, as part of internal reorganizations. The company is offering a voluntary exit program to US-based, full-time employees in the division, starting in early March.

Flipkart shut down ANS Commerce, an e-commerce platform that it acquired in 2022 to boost its D2C operations, effective Mar 31, 2025. The company did not provide specific reasons for shutting down ANS Commerce, but industry insiders point to cost-cutting measures as Flipkart prepares for a potential IPO in the next 12-18 months. What's the deal with e-commerce marketplaces buying and subsequently shutting down e-commerce platforms? Remember Selz?

YouTube is preparing to launch a major redesign of its TV app that will integrate paid subscription services from Primetime Channels directly into the front page, making them more visible alongside free content. This move aims to resolve past integration issues that stalled its streaming hub ambitions, helping YouTube compete more effectively with Amazon while expanding its subscription revenue. Additionally, with the refresh, YouTube Creators will be able to organize their video libraries into show pages with episodes and seasons for the first time, with YouTube adding previews of shows that play automatically, similar to Netflix.

Salesforce does not plan on hiring engineers this year because of the success of AI agents, according to the company's CEO Marc Benioff, who said last week, “My message to CEOs right now is that we are the last generation to manage only humans.” Benioff added that Salesforce's mission is to become “the No 1 digital labor provider, period” to other companies.

Amazon Web Services revealed Ocelot, its first-generation quantum computing chip, officially entering the race against other tech companies in harnessing the experimental technology. The company claims that the new chip can reduce the cost of implementing quantum error correction by up to 90%. The news comes just a few days after Microsoft unveiled its own quantum chip that it said could transform everything from fighting pollution to developing new medicines.

Meta fired roughly 20 employees who leaked confidential information outside the company, with the expectation of more terminations in the near future. Meta said, “We tell employees when they join the company, and we offer periodic reminders, that it is against our policies to leak internal information, no matter the intent.” The news follows a staunch warning from the company a few weeks ago, after a meeting where it was ironically leaked that Mark Zuckerberg said, “We try to be really open and then everything I say leaks. It sucks.” However it's unclear if the impacted employees were let go for leaking information before or after that meeting.

Flexport is rolling out a suite of AI products and features, which the company says will be the first in a series of semi-annual announcements of this kind. So like, Flexport Winter '25 Edition? Among the new products is Flexport Intelligence, which lets businesses get information about their shipments using natural language prompts, and Control Tower, which gives customers real-time visibility over their logistics network, even on freight not managed by Flexport.

DoorDash agreed to pay $16.75M to more than 60,000 Dashers who were supposed to receive that money in the form of tips during May 2017 to September 2019, but instead the company used it to cover base pay and pocketed the rest. If a driver was guaranteed $10 on a delivery, for example, DoorDash would pay a minimum of $1 of that, but the rest would scale based on how much the customer tipped. The only way a Dasher would see more than $10 in that scenario is if the customer tipped more than that. Meanwhile, DoorDash displayed a message to customers saying that “Dashers will always receive 100 percent of the tip” — without disclosing that it would take away from their base pay.

Temu partnered with Nuvei, a Canadian fintech that provides online and in-store payment processing solutions, to provide customers with greater access to local payment methods. Via the integration, Temu customers can pay using local payment methods in Japan, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal, with plans to expand to Colombia, Chile, and Canada later this year.

Bad news for idiots… The Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday that memecoins are not subject to regulatory oversight because they are not considered securities. The policy is consistent with the light regulatory approach that President Trump, who recently launched his own memecoin, promised during his campaign. The SEC did, however, say that fraudulent conduct related to the offer and sale of memecoins are still subject to enforcement and prosecution.

Microsoft is testing a free, ad-supported desktop version of Office, which includes limited functionality of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. In exchange for the free tools, the software displays a large advertisement banner on the right side of the window and plays a muted 15-second video every few hours. Similar to its web version, the Office apps only allow users to save files to OneDrive, although they can then be downloaded to local storage. Microsoft says it's just a test and there are no definitive plans to launch it to the masses.

The Delhi High Court of India ordered Amazon to pay $39M in damages for infringing on the Beverly Hills Polo Club trademark, ruling that the company was using the Polo club's horse rider logo on knockoff garments sold on its website. The company sued Amazon in 2020, alleging that the platform sold apparel with a nearly identical logo, under the brand name Symbol, infringing on the trademark. Justice Prathiba M Singh called Amazon’s actions “deliberate and willful infringement.”

Meta's Oversight Board, the independent group created to help with sensitive policy decisions, is examining the company's recent content moderation changes regarding ending fact checking and rolling back hate speech rules. The board's authority remains limited since its policy recommendations are non-binding, raising questions about its influence and purpose. Pretty soon we might just see the Oversight Board go the way of DEI.

Amazon is cracking down on the use of AI tools in job interviews including code assistants and teleprompter apps that feed interviewees live answers. The company recently shared guidelines with internal recruiters indicating that job applicants can be disqualified from the hiring process if they are found to be using these tools during the interviews, which Amazon feels gives candidates an unfair advantage and prevents it from evaluating their “authentic” skills. So Amazon can use AI to evaluate resumes and job candidates, but they can't use AI to excel at those evaluations? Feels hypocritical.

Meta says it fixed an error that caused some users to see content in their Instagram Reels feed “that should not have been recommended,” including violent and sexual imagery. Users claimed they saw content including “videos depicting dismemberment, visible innards or charred bodies,” as well as “sadistic remarks towards imagery depicting the suffering of humans and animals,” even with Instagram's “Sensitive Content Control” enabled to its highest moderation setting. Meta previously said that its systems were demoting too much content based on predictions that it “might” violate community standards, but it sounds like they turned the dial too much in the other direction.

Ekō, a global digital rights organization dedicated to curbing corporate power and advocating for consumer rights, filed complaints with data protection watchdogs in Norway, Germany, and Spain over Meta's targeted advertising practices after collecting evidence that Meta disregarded user requests to opt out of data collection and targeted advertising. Ekō aims to prompt regulatory actions through its complaint filings. This follows increasing scrutiny of Meta’s data practices, including a recent lawsuit alleging racial discrimination in ad targeting and a European court ruling that limits Meta’s use of personal data for behavioral advertising.

Meta must face a lawsuit claiming that the company prefers to hire foreign workers because it can pay them less than American workers, determined by a federal judge last week. Three US citizens are accusing Meta of refusing to hire them, even though they were qualified, because of Meta's “systematic preference” for visa holders, which could turn into a class-action suit. The judge in the case cited statistics that 15% of Meta's US workforce holds H-1B visas, compared to 0.5% of the overall workforce.

The Chinese government implemented a new policy in January 2024 that allows companies to register data as assets on their balance sheets, paving the way for data to be traded in a marketplace and boost company valuations. However adoption of the policy has been slow, with only a small percentage of companies doing so a year later. By late 2024, only 55 listed and 228 non-listed companies in China out of nearly 60M registered companies had recorded data assets on their balance sheets. Despite the slow start, Beijing remains intent on pushing its vision for data monetization to revitalize a slowing economy.

Amazon restricted vaginal health products for being “potentially embarrassing,” according to screenshots viewed by WIRED. The startup VuVatech, which sells products designed to soothe pelvic and vaginal pain and discomfort, said it has repeatedly had its product listings shut down for violating “adult' content rules and flagged in the system as items that are “potentially embarrassing or offensive.” An Amazon spokesperson said that the company understands the importance of sexual health and wellness products and has thousands of merchants offering them, later adding, “eww vaginas, icky!”

Mozilla deleted a promise from its Terms of Use to never sell its users' personal data, but claims that it removed the blanket promise because some legal jurisdictions define “sale” in a very broad way. The company says that because it shares anonymous data with partners, it can't claim to never “sell” data. I don't know, Mozilla — it feels pretty cut and dry to me. Mozilla later published a blog post explaining how they “sell” your data, but don't “sell” your data. LOL.

Hackers stole $1.5B worth of cryptocurrency from Bybit, a Dubai-based crypto exchange, in what's thought to be the biggest single digital theft in history. The exchange said that an attacker gained control of a wallet of Ethereum and transferred the contents to an unknown address. Bybit's CEO said that the company would refund everyone affected, even if the hacked currency was not returned. It is also offering a 10% reward for recovering the funds. Then again, there's technically a 100% reward for recovering the funds it you didn't return them to Bybit.

10. Seed rounds, IPOs, & acquisitions

Shop Circle, a London-based company that develops and acquires Shopify apps, raised $60M in a Series B round led by Nextalia Ventures, bringing its total amount raised to $180M. With the funding, Shop Circle also completed the acquisition of Aiden, an AI-powered guided selling software that assists e-commerce businesses in providing personalized product recommendations to customers.

Relay, a London-based platform that enables a decentralized delivery model using hyperlocal nodes to reduce shipping distances and optimize logistics, raised $35M in a Series A round led by Plural. The company plans to use the funds to expand its AI-driven delivery network across the UK and invest in engineering and operations to improve efficiency.

AI.com is for sale by Larry Fischer, a Brooklyn-based domain broker known for selling high-end domains, who thinks he can get at least $100M for the domain name. If he can make it happen, the sale would be the largest known domain sale ever, surpassing MicroStrategy's $30M sale of Voice.com in 2019. The anonymous owner of the domain said he bought it a long time ago to “have a vanity domain name that so happened to be my initials… I happened to be there ahead of its time. I'm truly blessed.”

Metric, an Oslo-based AI marketing platform designed to automate and optimize advertising campaigns for Shopify store owners, raised €8M in a Series A round led by Magnus Carlsen, Johan Brand, Marketer Group, and others. In addition to its financial investment, Marketer Group committed €3M worth of technology and resources to Metric including marketing automation IP developed many years ago.

Revolut, a UK-based fintech that offers banking services, currency exchange, stock and crypto trading, and business accounts, is considering a secondary share sale that could catapult its valuation to $60B, marking a $15B increase from its valuation six months ago. While 2024 figures aren't public yet, analysts predict that Revolut will report around $1B in profit before tax for the year, nearly double the $545M reported in 2023. The company is expected to go public by 2026.

DHL eCommerce is acquiring a minority stake in AJEX Linguistics Services, a Saudi Arabian parcel logistics company, marking the company's expansion into the rapidly growing region. DHL first established its presence in Saudi Arabia in the 1970s with its DHL Express business unit, and other divisions of the company have been operating in the country for several years, providing specialized services like contract logistics and freight forwarding solutions.

Quanta Financial, a San Francisco-based AI accounting startup that automates bookkeeping and provides real-time financial insights for businesses, raised $4.7M in a round led by Accel Partners. As part of its mission to eliminate repetitive tasks in accounting, the company has built an AI-native general ledger that's supported by granular subledgers that can quickly be integrated with a company's traditional financial and accounting tools, which it can use to generate accounting books and real-time reports. Hopefully they won't meet Bench's fate.

Nomagic, a Warsaw-based developer of AI-powered robotic systems used to automate repetitive pick-and-place tasks in warehouses, raised $44M in a round led by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, bringing its total amount raised to $66M. The company will use the funds to scale deployments across Europe over the next two years, as well as invest in building on recent breakthroughs by its AI team.

CoreWeave, a New Jersey-based cloud computing company that provides specialized GPU-accelerated infrastructure for AI and machine learning workloads, could file an IPO in the next week, according to Bloomberg sources, which could raise more than $4B at a $35B valuation. The news comes at the same time it was revealed that the company is spending an additional $1.2B on leasing data center space from Core Scientific. CoreWeave is a key customer for Core Scientific and had a take-over bid for the firm rejected last year.

Just Move In, a UK startup that assists individuals in managing various aspects of moving such as notifying local authorities, setting up utilities, and arranging insurance, raised $8M in a Series A round led by Eos Ventures, bringing its total amount raised to $5M. The company plans to expand into embedded financial services to help simplify processes like securing credit and insurance products. Turns out there's more money in connecting consumers with financial products than house utilities?

what3words, a London-based geolocation company that enables precise location identification for navigation, deliveries, and emergency services, acquired Swiftcomplete, a speed-focused address validation software company, for an undisclosed amount. The two companies have partnered since 2021 and the deal strengthens what3words position in the e-commerce location services sector.

super.money, an Indian payments app that separated from digital payments firm PhonePe two years ago, acquired BharatX, an Indian fintech that provides embedded credit solutions, enabling businesses to integrate BNPL directly into their platforms, for an undisclosed amount. Through the acquisition, super.money is entering the checkout financing segment, which when integrated with UPI, could simplify the process and improve accessibility for consumers.

Lovable, a Stockholm-based AI platform that enables users to create “production-ready software” without coding knowledge, raised $15M in a pre-Series A round led by Creandum, bringing its total amount raised to $27.6M. The two year old company claims to have 500k users building over 25,000 new products daily and over $17M in annual recurring revenue after scaling to 30,000 paying customers.

Glance, a platform that provides smart lock screen experiences, raised an undisclosed amount from Google, which was already an investor. Alongside the funding round, the company launched a new AI shopping experience that suggests different outfits on a user's personalized avatar, partnering with Google Gemini and Vertex AI to deploy the experience. Users who download the app will upload a selfie and customize an avatar, and then the app will display different looks on their lock screen. Sounds like a battery killer!

Capim, a Brazilian BNPL provider for dental services, raised $26.7M in a Series A round led by Valor Capital and QED Investors, bringing its total amount raised to $29M. Since launch in 2021, the company says it has helped more than 60,000 Brazilians gain access to dental procedures.

Mastercard Foundation pulled out of its $100M commitment to 54 Collective, an African venture capital firm that invests in early stage tech startups. During an internal meeting two weeks ago, 54 Collective's leadership team told staff that this would result in layoffs as the firm will disband its entire venture studio team, which includes staff that supports its portfolio companies, and that startups currently in the program will continue receiving tech support until April 30th.

Instant, a Brisbane-based fintech that provides an all-in-one retention marketing platform for e-commerce brands, helping them convert abandoned-cart shoppers into loyal customers through automated retention marketing, raised $18M in a Series A round led by VC Hummingbird Ventures, at a more than $100M valuation. The company says that it's adding $1M in revenue every month and that the fundraise allows it to grow even faster by accelerating product developing and continuing its focus on self-service capabilities, which are critical for scaling.