#229 – Humanoid Delivery Robots, Defense Contractors, & Meta quits e-commerce again

by Paul Drecksler | Jun 9, 2025 | Recent Newsletters

Hi Shopifreaks

I saw a LinkedIn post by Eduardo Ordax talking about how AI isn't so random, and to put it to the test, he asked various AI chatbots to come up with a random number. I almost didn't believe his results until I tried it for myself! Watch my video on LinkedIn if you're ready to have your mind blown! 🤯

In other news, I've got another jam-packed edition for you covering humanoid robot delivery drivers, defense contractors entering the e-commerce space, and PayPal's moves towards ‘super app' status — so let's dive right in.

In this week's edition I cover:

2025 layoffs on the rise
Meta abandons its checkout ambitions
Amazon's robot testing ground
Bolt's controversial partnership
Amazon sunsets Posts
TikTok organic views tanking
BNPL providers launching credit cards
PayPal's entry into hotel booking
TikTok's new AI ad targeting tools
Glance's lock screen shopping platform
Poshmark ditches verified sellers
Shopify shuts down Linkpop

All this and more in this week's 229th Edition of Shopifreaks. Thanks for subscribing and sharing!

Stat of the Week

Nearly 700,000 layoffs have been announced so far in 2025, already approaching the full-year total for 2024. The services, retail, nonprofit, and tech sectors led the losses, while government-related job cuts, largely tied to the Trump administration’s DOGE initiative, remain the largest source. U.S. employers announced nearly 100,000 job cuts in May, up 47% from last year, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

1. Meta ditches onsite checkout on Facebook and Instagram

Meta is announced that it will begin transitioning all Facebook and Instagram Shops back to external website checkout starting June 2025, as opposed to forcing users to checkout within the apps — which is how the Shops program originally started back in 2020.

The company wrote in a help post:

“Starting in June 2025, Shops will gradually begin using website checkout instead of checkout on Facebook or Instagram. While customers will discover new products on Facebook and Instagram, they’ll now be directed to your own website for checkout. This will give you more control of the checkout experience and reduce the time it takes to set up and maintain your shop.”

The change won't be made to all shops at once, but Meta says that most shops should be updated by the end of August 2025.

Here's a brief history of Meta's relationship with Shops:

May 2020: Meta (then Facebook) launched Facebook and Instagram Shops. Initially checkout was flexible and US merchants had the option of either linking out to their own websites for checkout or using Meta's native checkout experience.
2021: Meta began pushing for native checkout, providing incentives for merchants such as free transaction processing for a limited time. However on-site checkout remained an option for merchants.
2022: Meta started expanding Shops availability to more countries. U.S. merchants were still encouraged to use in-app checkout, which more began to adopt, but the majority of international merchants still used website checkout because native checkout wasn't yet supported globally.
2023: Meta announced that merchants would be required to use Meta's native checkout starting in April 2024 and that merchants would no longer be allowed to direct customers off-platform for checkout. However international merchants were still allowed to use website checkout in most markets due to lack of availability of in-app checkout.
2024-2025: Native checkout was required for U.S. Shops with product listings on Instagram/Facebook, with website checkout no longer an option. Many brands opted to run shoppable posts without a full Shop, which still allowed outbound links in certain ad formats or organic posts. International markets remained mixed, with some offering native checkout and others not.

I've never seen a company botch social commerce more than Meta, and they've had every opportunity in the world to lead the path. They've repeatedly made the same mistake with their affiliate programs, live shopping features, and their internal shops: trying to own the entire transaction.

Rather than simply giving creators and merchants great tools to run their businesses, Meta has been obsessed with controlling the entire experience to maximize its benefit, which has been to the company's detriment, as none of their efforts have successfully panned out.

Back in August 2022, I wrote:

“Is Meta trying to be TikTok, Snapchat, or Tinder now-a-days? Are they best friends with Shopify or competitors? Are they a social network, content discovery platform, or e-commerce marketplace?”

Today I can pose a new question:

“Is Meta trying to be Google Shopping, OpenAI, or Perplexity now-a-days? Or all the above?”

Without a doubt, Meta is making this move in preparation to launch their own agentic AI shopping tool to compete against the companies above. Monkey see, monkey do.

The move is also likely linked to Meta's ongoing battle with the European Commission over its monopolistic practices, and I'd imagine that removing onsite checkout from the equation and driving traffic back to merchants' websites and partner marketplaces will help ease some of the EU's concerns.

In the meantime, yet another swing and a miss for Meta's e-commerce ambitions.

2. Amazon is developing humanoid robots to replace delivery workers

Amazon is developing AI software and testing humanoid robots to eventually assist or replace human delivery drivers, starting with indoor trials at a new obstacle course called the “humanoid park” in San Francisco.

To spearhead the efforts, Amazon launched a new team within its Lab126 hardware division to develop agentic AI for use in robotics and other applications, which unlike chatbots, can execute complex, multistep tasks autonomously. The group will create a framework to enable robots to understand and act on natural language commands, aiming to turn warehouse robots into versatile assistants.

Here's the long term goal:

During a virtual meeting with your team, who are all located in other office parks around the country due to your company's RTO mandate, you order an item on Amazon in the comfort of your cubicle.
A robot pulls, packs, and ships the item from an FBA warehouse.
A self-driving van (likely a Zoox or Rivian) autonomously drives to your house without any drivers having to pee in bottles.
A humanoid robot sprints Terminator-style from the vehicle to your front door, narrowly avoiding your chihuahua.
Your Ring doorbell captures the delivery and sends you a photo of the package on your doorstep, minutes before your friendly neighborhood porch pirates steal it.
You get home from work, sit your fat ass on your couch, and keep on ordering things with Prime.

Initial tests will use hardware like China’s $16K Unitree bots, while Amazon trains foundation models and multimodal AI to handle physical tasks and real-world environments. Outdoor “field trip” tests are expected later this year so that the robots can try walking on real streets and delivering packages to homes.

Right now several companies including Nvidia, Google, and Tesla are building developing software and hardware for humanoid robots, which offer a friendly sci-fi experience to consumers, but at what point will these companies simply scrap the “humanoid” part?

2040 Prediction: A drone-style robot flies to your house, drops from the sky as its propellers morph into octopus-style legs, lands on your driveway and crab-walks to your front door to deliver your package. Your 3-year-old daughter waves to the robot from the window, while your 116-year-old mother-in-law sits terrified on the porch.

3. Bolt taps controversial AI company Palantir for checkout personalization

Bolt, the one-click checkout fintech started by Ryan Breslow, is partnering with Palantir Technologies, the data analytics firm co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel, to offer a payments process enhanced by AI.

The companies plan to offer consumers a personalized checkout experience by leveraging Palantir's software and data analysis, which will present customers with their preferred payment method, as well as remember their shopping preferences and make suggestions for additional items to buy.

Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow said:

“We see a big opportunity right now at making payments more intelligent. Certain investor groups wanted to do different things, and they got their time to do those different things, and it didn’t work as well as they thought. Now I’m back and we’re implementing all of the original vision of Bolt.”

Quick Backstory: Breslow founded Bolt in 2014 from his Stanford dorm and grew it into a $11B fintech startup, however, he stepped down as CEO in 2022 amid investor tension and social media backlash over a series of tweets aimed at Y Combinator and Stripe, just before the company’s valuation and headcount collapsed. After a turbulent two years for the company marked by lawsuits and layoffs, Breslow returned as CEO in March 2025 with board support and a controversial $14B fundraising package, and is now leading a turnaround to restore Bolt’s relevance in the checkout space.

Through the new Palantir partnership, Bolt says it will use a trove of data it has collected about millions of shoppers to create specialized models that can offer shoppers a customized checkout experience that can be embedded within retailers' sites and apps. Bolt will also bring the models to its recently launched SuperApp, an all-in-one finance and crypto hub that delivers real-time shopper signals, with plans to bring deeper personalization and intelligence to every phase of the buying journey in the future.

Okay, but what, is Palantir?

Palantir is a U.S.-based software company that builds data integration and analysis platforms for government agencies, defense contractors, and large enterprises. It was founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, with early backing from the CIA’s venture arm In-Q-Tel. The company’s flagship products, Palantir Gotham and Palantir Foundry, are used for intelligence, military operations, and commercial data analysis. It went public in 2020 and is now expanding into private sector markets like e-commerce.

Palantir is facing mounting public scrutiny for its work with the Trump administration, and most recently, its increasingly defensive stance toward journalists and critics after an employee threatened to call the police on a WIRED journalist who was watching software demonstrations at its AI+ Expo booth, and later had conference security remove at least three other journalists.

Honestly, a Thiel-Breslow partnership may be a match made in heaven, however, it'll be up to merchants whether they want to align themselves with a defense contractor to power their product recommendations. Then again, with Microsoft, Google, Meta, OpenAI, and other AI goliaths all involved with the military, it might be inevitable no matter which AI company you choose.

4. Amazon shuts down its social-feed Posts

Amazon is shutting down its Posts program, which allowed brands to create social-style image feeds on its site, citing declining impressions and upcoming site redesigns. Posts were free for brands to create, but they could optionally pay to boost a Post and run it as a Sponsored Brands ad that appeared in search results.

The move follows Amazon’s earlier shutdown of Inspire, its TikTok clone for shopping videos, signaling a retreat from social-style browsing features as the company shifts focus toward AI-powered shopping tools and sponsored ad formats.

Alexander Swade, co-founder of Marketzone, said it well:

“You lived in a secret corner of the PDP, hidden beneath a scroll so long that only the most determined shoppers with carpal tunnel found you.
You were Amazon’s attempt to be social.
But social, you were not.

You were awkward, like a LinkedIn DM that starts with “Hey 👋🏼 I see we’re in the same space…”
Still, we believed. We hoped. We scheduled.

We created calendars, used UGC, and convinced our bosses that this would definitely ‘build brand equity.'
But deep down, we knew: Amazon built a stage and forgot to invite an audience.
So long, Posts.”

New Posts creation ends June 16 and the program will fully close on July 31.

5. Is the era of free organic TikTok views over for brands?

TikTok Shop’s promise of free viral exposure is fading and the platform is shifting toward a paid ad model in 2025, according to three company partners and two TikTok staffers who spoke to Business Insider. The pivot began last year, but has picked up significantly in 2025, with TikTok now prioritizing paid promotions and offering fewer organic views, as well as reduced perks to merchants like free shipping subsidies.

When TikTok first began testing Shop in the U.S. in late 2022, it had to send free traffic to sellers in order to generate interest and prove that its platform could drive sales. However ultimately, the company wants its business to look more like that of its Chinese sister app Douyin or Amazon, which make money from ads in addition to taking a commission on product sales.

Some agency partners attribute the shift to a lot more companies competing for attention on the platform, while others say it's a sign that the platform is maturing.

A TikTok spokesperson told Business Insider that over 80% of TikTok Shop traffic is still organic, which includes traffic to merchant videos as well as influencer videos that contain shoppable links. They added:

“While paid traffic is growing, the ability to create high quality content is the most important factor driving differentiated performance among sellers. TikTok Shop works closely with sellers to support their growth, offering best practices and suggestions on content strategy to help improve quality and reach.”

We all knew this was coming, right?

We didn't call it “the golden age of TikTok selling” because it was going to last forever. First you build the platform and the audience, then you charge to reach them. It's the standard social network or marketplace playbook. In this case, TikTok is both.

Plus, with a TikTok ban looming in the U.S., there's no time like the present to flip the dial and begin focusing heavier on monetization.

All that said, even if the “golden age” is over for brands to get free organic traffic on TikTok, it's still an overall net positive for consumers that the platform exists, as competition in the space generally helps drive down the cost of advertising for merchants across all platforms.

6. More BNPL companies are launching credit cards

Credit cards are hot again! We're going full circle, and BNPL companies are now launching credit cards, embracing the medium they set out to disrupt.

PayPal is rolling out physical payment cards for eligible U.S. PayPal Credit users, allowing them to make in-store purchases wherever Mastercard is accepted with six-month deferred interest on travel and promotional financing terms on purchases over $149.

Klarna is piloting a card in the U.S. that spends like debit but can flip into pay later mode, extending its BNPL option from online to an in-store experience, with plans to extend its launch into Europe later this year. The company previously launched a credit card in the UK back in 2022.

Last but not least, Zilch is launching a physical card in the UK this September in partnership with Visa, which will allow users to earn rewards and access installment payments, just like they can online.

The moves follow rivals like Affirm, Afterpay, Upgrade, and Chime, which have offered various types of physical cards for several years.

In turn, traditional credit card issuers have been aggressively adding installment payment options to their offerings during the past few years, such as American Express' Plan It, Chase's My Chase Plan, Citi's Flex Pay, and Capital One's installment plans.

Basically the worlds of BNPL and traditional credit card lending are merging — as they should. BNPL has always been a feature, not a service, in my opinion. Now we just need to come up with proper regulation to protect consumers from this newly merged world, but I won't hold my breath…

7. PayPal is making more ‘super app' moves…

PayPal is partnering with hotel payment provider Selfbook to let users search for hotels and make bookings directly within the PayPal app. Selfbook is a booking and payment platform that is usually integrated into a hotel's website, helping them get more bookings on their own site by offering a streamlined interface and digital wallet payment options. Now, instead of just living on individual hotel sites, Selfbook's network will be featured in PayPal's Offers tab.

PayPal is also planning on offering exclusive discounts to users within the app, as well as letting users pay with BNPL for select hotels that have enabled the feature. In turn, Selfbook will transition to using PayPal’s enterprise payment suite to power credit card payments for its hotels. It's also using PayPal as a payments partner within Perplexity, which unveiled a feature that lets users discover and book hotels within the chat back in March.

PayPal CEO Alex Chriss said:

“AI is fundamentally changing how consumers plan and pay for their vacations and getaways. Together with Selfbook, we're embedding hotel booking in the new ways travelers are planning trips with agentic chats like Perplexity. PayPal is thrilled to bring agentic commerce solutions to travel.”

PayPal is aggressively inching towards ‘super app' status and becoming a one-stop shop for money, shopping, and services:

Aug 2024: PayPal opened its Fastlane service to all U.S. businesses, which is their version of one-click checkout.
Sep 2024: PayPal integrated its debit card with Apple's mobile wallet and began offering cashback rewards on in-person purchases.
Oct 2024: PayPal launched PayPal Ads, a new advertising business to help marketers tap into its data on billions of transactions that take place across its network.
Nov 2024: It introduced a money-pooling feature that makes it easier to collect and pay for things as a group.
Feb 2025: PayPal partnered with Verifone to pair its 35M terminals worldwide with PayPal's Braintree processing infrastructure, which was rebranded as PayPal Enterprise Payments.
Apr 2025: PayPal introduced rewards for its stablecoin PYUSD, enabling users to earn 3.7% annually for holding the coin in their PayPal or Venmo wallets.
May 2025: Perplexity partnered with PayPal to power agentic commerce across its Perplexity Pro platform.
Jun 2025: In the story above, I mentioned that PayPal is rolling out physical payment cards for eligible U.S. PayPal Credit users.

8. TikTok launches new AI tools for ad targeting

TikTok introduced a suite of AI-powered tools designed to give advertisers more real-time insight into user behavior and content trends. New features include:

Insight Spotlight – a tool that analyzes industry-specific engagement and suggests content strategies based on user demographics and viewing patterns.
Market Scope – a funnel-tracking dashboard the company began testing in select markets last month that tracks where users are in their journey in regards to awareness, consideration, and conversion.
Brand Consideration Ads – a tool that aids marketers in optimizing an ad when users reach the consideration phase.
Content Suite – a tool that shares data with marketers about content that mention's the brand, and then allows the brand to ask creators if they want to create an ad from that content.

Meanwhile for users…

TikTok is rolling out new controls for users to customize their “For You” feeds, including:

Manage Topics – a feature that lets users adjust interest levels across 10+ broad categories like Arts, Travel, Nature and Sports.
Smart Keyword Filters – an AI powered feature that enable users to block specific hashtags or keywords from appearing in their feed.

TikTok also introduced an online guide explaining how its algorithm works and how users can influence recommendations. The updates aim to offer more personalization and reduce exposure to harmful trends, although it remains to be seen how widely these controls will be adopted.

9. Other e-commerce news of interest

OnePay, the fintech startup majority-owned by Walmart, will launch two credit cards this fall in partnership with Synchrony, replacing its previous relationship with Capital One. The new program includes a general-purpose Mastercard and a Walmart-only store card, with approvals handled through Synchrony but the customer experience run via OnePay’s mobile app. The move follows OnePay’s recent Klarna BNPL integration and expands its offerings, which now include debit cards, savings accounts, and a digital wallet.

Glance, a Google-backed platform that provides smart lock screen experiences, launched Glance AI, a generative AI-powered shopping platform built on Google’s Gemini and Imagen that lets users visualize themselves in outfits via a selfie and make purchases directly from the lock screen. The platform partners with over 400 retailers to deliver AI-styled recommendations based on trends and events and is expected to rollout next month to Samsung users in the U.S. as both an app and a lock screen experience.

Poshmark is discontinuing its Verified Seller Program on June 10, which piloted in early 2025 and had allowed select vetted sellers to bypass authentication for items over $500 and ship directly to buyers. The platform cited a renewed focus on its Posh Authenticate service instead, which automatically routes high ticket items to its headquarters for authentication before the item gets shipped out to buyers. Value Added Resource also reports a potential revival of the Posh Pass shipping subscription, which piloted in late 2024, offering buyers $5.95 shipping subsidized by the platform, but it was shelved alongside a rollback of its controversial fee structure changes.

eBay sellers are reporting being charged for Promoted Listings ad fees on sales completed as far back as January, with some sellers seeing double or triple charges for the same transaction. eBay support has provided conflicting responses, with some agents calling it a known issue and others claiming the charges are legitimate. The incident follows similar back-charging problems in previous years and raises concerns about eBay’s increasingly aggressive ad revenue practices.

Shopify is discontinuing its Linkpop ‘link in bio’ service on July 7, 2025, according to an e-mail sent to users that offered no explanation for the shutdown. Launched in 2022, Linkpop allowed brands to create bio pages with Shopify checkout integration for seamless purchasing. Users are now directed to third-party ‘link in bio’ apps via Shopify’s App Store. Linkpop signups have already been closed, and existing pages will no longer be editable after the cutoff date.

Meta is taking the European Commission to court to dispute the inclusion of Messenger and Marketplace as “core platform services” under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which imposes strict obligations on designated gatekeepers. Meta argues that Messenger is merely a feature of Facebook, not a standalone service, and that Marketplace was wrongly categorized, despite the Commission later removing it from the list. Apple and TikTok are also filing legal challenges against the commission — but what these companies don't seem to realize is that the rules are specifically made for them. I'd imagine that they can challenge the Digital Markets Act and the EU's classification of their services all day, but it'll just lead to an adaptation of the rules. Who do they think these rules are targeting?

Shopify came out victorious against the Canada Revenue Agency, which had sought six years of detailed records on Shopify merchants to verify tax compliance in Canada and Australia. The CRA wanted the names of individuals who own Shopify accounts, their birthdates, addresses, phone numbers, and their bank transit, institution, and account numbers, which Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke called “blatant overreach.” A federal judge ruled the CRA’s request was overly broad and failed to identify specific individuals, ordering Shopify not to release the data and for the CRA to pay $90,000 in legal costs.

Temu’s daily active users in the U.S. fell by 48% in May compared to March, while Shein is down a comparatively smaller 25% during the same time period, according market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, as the platform faces mounting challenges from new U.S. tariffs and the end of the de minimis exemption. The declines are also reflected in both platforms' Apple App Store rankings, with Temu dropping to 132nd place in May, down from Top 3 ranking a year ago, and Shein dropping to 60 last month versus 10th place a year prior. The user and app rank drop off comes as both companies have pulled back on U.S. advertising spend over recent months since the Trump administration’s tariff announcements.

Square launched Square AI, a conversational assistant integrated into its Dashboard that helps sellers navigate the platform and analyze their business data. The tool can answer questions about sales, inventory, customers, and staffing by referencing the seller’s own data, aiming to serve as a “virtual employee.” Square AI is now available in public beta for all sellers in the U.S., with more features to come throughout the year.

eBay is launching a new Livestream Shopping Tour with in-person and streaming events across the U.S., in hopes of reviving its underperforming eBay Live platform. The tour will feature pop-ups at hobby shops, conventions, and trade nights through 2025, targeting the Enthusiast Buyer segment, which are users who purchase 6+ times per year and spend more than $800 across collectibles, fashion, auto parts, and luxury categories. eBay frames the move as community-focused, but critics note the strategy rehashes past efforts that generated more hype than lasting growth.

Amazon pledged to step up its fight against fake reviews and crack down on sellers abusing product ratings following a UK Competition and Markets Authority investigation. (I feel like I've heard this song before…) The company committed to enhancing its systems to detect fake reviews and combat “catalogue abuse,” where sellers misattribute reviews to unrelated products, promising to dole out punishments that include outright bans and deleting past reviews. Amazon also promised to provide easier ways for customers to report fake content.

Nearly one-third of TikTok users in the U.S. have made a purchase on TikTok Shop in the past year, according to a YouGov survey of over 1,000 U.S. adults. Most buyers spent less than $50, though a small portion made larger purchases, with apparel, electronics, home goods, and food topping the list of popular categories. Shoppers aged 35 to 54 are the most active TikTok Shop buyers, outpacing younger users, and price is the biggest motivator for users to shop, with discounts outweighing influencer-driven purchasing.

Meta is looking to partner with studios like Disney and A24 to secure exclusive immersive content for its upcoming premium virtual reality headset, codenamed “Loma,” which is set to launch next year at a price point of under $1000. To prepare for its launch, Meta is offering millions for original and adapted content based on popular IPs, aiming to drive adoption through entertainment appeal. The company's VR division, Reality Labs, continues to operate at a loss despite leading the market in headset sales.

“Little Tech” startups, ie: unregulated, VC-funded firms, are rapidly deploying AI-powered workplace surveillance tools across developing nations, according to a report from Coworker.org. The technologies, which include biometric timekeeping, productivity dashboards, and predictive HR analytics, are increasingly being used to monitor gig workers and office staff in countries like Kenya, Nigeria, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, and India, and workers say the systems erode autonomy and create stress. Rest of World reports that algorithmic management is becoming the norm in lower-regulated markets.

The IRS open sourced most of its free tax filing program, Direct File, which served 300,000 users in a successful pilot, as the software is at risk of being shut down by Intuit's lobbyists and President Trump's “big, beautiful bill.” The released code can't fully run without IRS systems, but it provides a valuable foundation for future tax filing tools. Former Direct File developers have now joined a fellowship to explore new ways to simplify tax filing and expand the program’s impact beyond the IRS.

Reddit is suing Anthropic for allegedly accessing its platform more than 100,000 times since July 2024, after the company said it had blocked its bots from doing so. In the filing, Reddit called Anthropic a “late-blooming artificial intelligence company that bills itself as the white knight of the AI industry,” and claiming that “it is anything but.” (I've got to agree with that statement.) Reddit's chief legal officer told The Verge that Anthropic's “commercial exploitation” of Reddit content could be worth billions of dollars, however, it seems that Reddit and Google have already priced Reddit's data at $60M a year for AI training, so I don't know where they got the “billions” figure from.

OpenAI was ordered to “indefinitely” preserve all ChatGPT user data, including deleted conversations, to potentially serve as evidence in The New York Times' ongoing copyright lawsuit against the company. OpenAI normally deletes chats within 30 days and argues that the mandate undermines user privacy and violates its policies, criticizing the order as an “overreach” and a dangerous precedent. NYT claims that retaining this data is necessary to support its case that OpenAI unlawfully used millions of its articles to train AI models.

Alphabet will invest $500M over the next decade on “being less evil” as part of a shareholder lawsuit settlement filed in 2021 that accused Google of jeopardizing its future through monopolistic practices. The deal requires Alphabet to form a board-level committee to oversee antitrust risks and mandates internal reforms to help employees flag potential legal issues, with direct reporting to CEO Sundar Pichai. Google also agreed to preserve communications after its use of auto-deleting chats drew criticism from several judges overseeing its antitrust cases.

Meta took down hundreds of ads promoting AI-powered “nudify” tools that generate sexually explicit deepfakes of real people, following a CBS News investigation that exposed widespread promotion of these apps across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. The ads, which primarily targeted men in the U.S., EU, and UK, violated Meta’s explicit policies against non-consensual intimate imagery and sexualized harassment. Meta says it is continually improving enforcement, but CBS continued to find new ads surfacing after the initial removals. Last month, President Trump signed into law the “Take It Down Act,” which requires websites and social media companies to remove deepfake content within 48 hours of notice from a victim.

Amazon Prime VP Jamil Ghani says the company knows that customers are sharing Prime benefits beyond their households, but unlike Netflix and Disney, it’s not enforcing strict restrictions. Instead, Amazon is attempting to encourage users to sign up for their own memberships, with messages explaining that Prime is designed for people living together, such as families or roommates. Amazon hasn’t ruled out future action, but it’s taking a softer approach for now, even as rival platforms have seen big subscriber boosts after cracking down on sharing.

Google Wallet is ending its PayPal integration for U.S. users, effective June 13th, with plans to automatically delete linked PayPal accounts across all U.S. wallets. Google offered no explanation of why the integration is ending specifically in the U.S., but it's speculated that PayPal is preparing its own U.S. contactless payment feature, similar to one recently launched in Germany, and wants to push users towards its official PayPal app to seize more revenue from each transaction.

X launched a newly rebuilt direct messaging system, dubbed XChat, for X Premium subscribers that includes full encryption, vanishing messages, file attachments, and audio/video calls. The new messaging architecture is designed to serve as a foundation for X Payments, Elon Musk's upcoming money transfer and digital wallet service, which will launch later this year, which Musk hopes will position X to become an all-in-one app similar to China’s WeChat.

In corporate changeover this week… Home Depot promoted Angie Brown to executive VP and CIO, tasked with overseeing the company's technology strategy across its 2,350 stores and 800 distribution branches. Airbnb named Rebecca Van Dyck as its new head marketer, succeeding Hiroki Asai, who will take on the title of chief experience officer. Flipkart promoted Ravi Iyer, who has been with the company for over 11 years, to chief financial officer of its e-commerce division. Lastly, TikTok is replacing US-hired staff in its Seattle office with managers connected to China to replicate its success in Asia. Meetings that used to be held in English are now reportedly conducted in Mandarin and managers increasingly write in Chinese when communicating on the company's internal messaging app, with English-speaking staff forced to rely on translation tools to keep up.

This week in layoffs… Microsoft cut more than 300 employees in Washington state, mostly software engineers, following its 6,000 job cuts announced last month. Walmart laid off 106 tech workers in Silicon Valley as part of its plan to reduce its corporate headcount by approximately 1,500 employees nationwide. Amazon cut a little under 100 jobs across its Books division, including roles in its Kindle and Goodreads teams, as part of a broader cost-cutting push that has eliminated about 27,000 positions since 2022. Amazon also said it would freeze hiring for its retail business in 2025, holding headcount-related operating expenses steady to boost efficiency and margins. Lastly, Kohl's is closing an e-commerce fulfillment center in Middleton, Ohio, impacting 768 workers, which it says is to drive greater cost efficiency and ensure the long-term health of its business — a ship which may have already sailed.

The UK government is considering introducing online safety measures to limit the amount of time children can spend on social media, including a two-hour cap on the use of individual apps and a 10pm curfew — both features which are already available to parents who use Apple or Google's parental controls. Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said the focus is on the addictive nature of apps, while campaigners like Ian Russell argue stronger laws are urgently needed, however, the effort faces challenges given that major tech and social media firms are based in the U.S., and the Trump administration has been highly critical of foreign governments attempting to regulate its tech businesses.

Germany’s Federal Cartel Office claims that Amazon's price-setting practices, which do not allow third-party sellers to price their products above a certain limit, likely violate the European Union's anti-trust laws by unfairly influencing competitors' pricing. The office's president, Andreas Mundt, said, “As Amazon directly competes with the Marketplace sellers on its platform, influencing its competitors’ pricing, including in the form of price caps, is inherently problematic from a competition perspective,” adding that the caps become even more problematic when sellers are unable to cover their costs, which is becoming more likely as global tariffs raise prices.

Amazon India implemented a flat ₹5 marketplace fee (roughly 5.8 cents) on all customer orders in the country, including for Prime members, aligning with rivals like Flipkart, Blinkit, and Swiggy Instamart. The move is designed to offset high delivery costs in a low-margin market where Prime subscriptions are significantly cheaper than in the U.S. at less than $10/year for Prime Lite, which offers a reduced set of benefits for a lower cost. Analysts say the fee normalizes per-order surcharges, without being too high to trigger user churn, and offers Amazon a path to profitability.

Aylo, parent of Pornhub, YouPorn, and RedTube, suspended service in France last week to protest a new law requiring porn sites to verify users’ ages via credit card or government ID, which is a significant move given that France is its second-largest market. The law, effective June 7, mandates third-party verification to protect privacy, but Aylo argues that the method risks data breaches and that device-level verification by tech companies would be safer. France’s Minister of Digital Affairs defended the law as “not about stigmatizing adults, but about protecting our children.”

South Korea’s major delivery companies paused services on Tuesday’s presidential election day to allow workers time to vote, responding to union and civic group pressure, marking the first time Coupang’s Rocket Delivery service halted since its 2014 launch. Other logistics firms also joined the “no-delivery” push, while brick-and-mortar stores and some e-commerce platforms, like Ssg.com and Market Kurly, continued limited operations. The move follows growing momentum to officially designate election days as non-delivery days to prioritize worker rights in the country. USA, are you paying attention?

Mercado Libre is expanding free shipping to “practically the entire site” in its main market Brazil, where it currently earns more than 50% of its e-commerce revenues. The move is expected to be costly, but the company hopes that it will drive sales higher and help it better compete with Amazon, Shopee, and Temu, which also operate in the country.

India’s Central Consumer Protection Authority directed all e-commerce platforms to conduct self-audits within three months to identify and eliminate “dark patterns,” deceptive design practices that mislead consumers into unintended actions. Platforms are also encouraged to submit self-declarations confirming compliance to help build trust and promote fairer digital commerce. “We investigated ourselves and found nothing.” LOL. The CCPA has already issued notices to some violators and is monitoring the issue through a Joint Working Group, following the government's 2023 guidelines to eradicate 13 specific dark patterns as part of its push to strengthen consumer protections.

Flipkart secured a lending license from the Indian central bank and banking regulator, becoming the first major e-commerce platform in India to get a direct lending license. The Walmart-owned company plans to provide financing to both customers and sellers via its marketplace and fintech app, super.money, within months, pending final internal approvals and board appointments. Flipkart first applied for the license in 2022.

OpenAI announced that it now has 3M paying business users, up from 2M in February, mostly from its ChatGPT Enterprise, Team, and Edu customers. The company's COO, Brad Lightcap, said that OpenAI is seeing its business tools adopted across highly regulated sectors like financial services and health care, and its customer base now includes enterprise companies like Lowe's, Morgan Stanley, and Uber. The news comes one week after I reported that Anthropic hit $3B in annualized revenue, up from $1B in December 2024.

🏆 This week's most ridiculous story… Chinese AI companies, including Alibaba's Qwen, ByteDance's Duobao, and Tencent's Yuanbao, have temporarily disabled functions including picture recognition to prevent students from cheating during the country's annual “gaokao” college entrance examinations. China's infamously rigorous entrance examinations are a rite of passage for teenagers across the country, with students and parents pulling out all stops for any edge they can get. To minimize disruption, AI companies are temporarily freezing services during exam hours from June 7th to 10th. As the kids would say — they cooked!

10. Seed rounds, IPOs, & acquisitions

Circle, a fintech best known for issuing USDC, the world's second-largest stablecoin behind USDT, raised nearly $1.1B in its NYSE debut, opening at $69 per share and briefly surging to over $103 before closing above $80, valuing the company near $18B. The company previously attempted to go public via SPAC in 2021 before cancelling the offering. It recently entertained offers from Ripple and Coinbase to be acquired, until demand for stablecoins began to rise in recent months, paving the way for its IPO.

Michaels, a specialty retailer of arts, crafts, and home décor, acquired the intellectual property and private label brands of Joann, a specialty retailer of fabrics, sewing, and arts & crafts, including Big Twist, its private label yarn brand, following Joann’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy. As part of the move, Michaels is expanding its fabric, sewing, and yarn assortment with over 600 new products and launching a dedicated landing page for Joann customers. The company is also boosting its party supply offerings by 200% starting in August, filling gaps left by competitors like Party City, which is going out of business.

You.com, a Palo Alto-based AI search engine that integrates chat and personalization features, is in talks with Cox Enterprises for a funding round that would value the company at $1.4B. The move supports You.com's pivot toward selling AI search tools to businesses, following slower consumer growth compared to rivals like Perplexity. The five-year-old company, led by former Salesforce AI chief Richard Socher, recently passed $50M in annualized revenue and now offers customizable AI models via API.

Xiaohongshu’s valuation has jumped to $26B in recent secondary transactions, according to internal documents from GSR Ventures. The Chinese lifestyle and e-commerce platform, known as Red Note in the U.S., is gaining traction as an alternative to TikTok, particularly amid regulatory uncertainty. GSR’s fund now holds over 8% of Xiaohongshu and lists it as its largest asset, fueling speculation of a potential IPO later this year. The company is projected to double its profits to over $1B in 2024.

Bumper, a UK-based fintech that offers car repair financing and payment solutions, acquired Cocoon Payments, a digital payments platform used by over 20% of the top 100 franchised dealer groups. The move follows Bumper’s 2024 acquisition of AutoBI and further strengthens its offering in the automotive retail space, while aligning with its mission to streamline payments and lower dealer fees across Europe.

Fiserv, a Wisconsin-based global provider of payments and financial services technology, acquired the remaining 49.9% stake in AIB Merchant Services, its joint venture with AIB Group, making it the sole owner of the European payments provider. The move is aimed at accelerating growth in Europe, with a focus on expanding Fiserv’s Clover POS system.

Voxel, a San Francisco-based AI planform that offers workplace safety and risk management solutions for physical operations including warehouses and e-commerce logistics companies, raised $44M in a Series B round led by NewRoad Capital Partners. The company says that customers that use its platform, which include Macy's and Dick's Sporting Goods, have seen injury rates drop by up to 91%.

Outter, a plugin-and-play engine that lets companies embed advanced, contextual AI into their products without writing code, is preparing to raise up to €1.2M at a valuation between €8–€14M. Unlike conventional co-pilots that can only chat, Outter's solution actively performs tasks, allowing users to trigger real actions within their product through conversational prompts. The upcoming funding will accelerate the company's deployment cycle as it aims to become Europe’s default AI engine.

Franklin, a Copenhagen-based fintech that's building a unified platform for e-commerce that offers payments, expense management, and reconciliation, raised $1M from existing investors, angels, and family offices to grow its team and product offerings. The company has reached €600,000 in ARR and nearly 100 customers since launching less than a year ago and will use the funds further its mission of helping SMBs streamline financial operations and retain more revenue.

PixelFox, an AI-powered product image optimization platform, is acquiring Smart Upsell AI, a Shopify app that uses AI to analyze customer behavior and automatically suggest relevant products. Smart Upsell AI has not yet been launched commercially, and PixelFox hopes that it is best fit to bring it to market through the company's existing infrastructure and customer base.

Kosmic AI, an Indian social commerce startup that offers a link-in-bio tool, smart links to streamline mobile checkout experiences, chat automation tools, and affiliate program infrastructure, raised $200k in pre-seed funding from a group of undisclosed angel investors across India and the Middle East. The company will use the funds to strengthen its no-code product suite, grow its number of integrations, and expand operations across SEA.

Meta is in talks to make up to a $10B investment in Scale AI, a San Francisco-based data labeling and management services that accelerates the development of AI models, making it one of the largest private company funding events of all time. The terms of the deal are not finalized and could still change, according to Bloomberg sources. Scale AI's customers include Microsoft and OpenAI and was last valued at $14B in 2024 in a funding round that included backing from both Meta and Microsoft.

Udaan, India's largest B2B e-commerce marketplace, raised $114M in a round led by M&G Investments and Lightspeed at a $1.8B valuation. The company's valuation has dropped by 44% from its high of $3.2B after a funding round in January 2021, but has posted over 60% YoY revenue growth in 2024. The funds will be used to deepen its category presence, particularly in fast moving consumer goods and other high volume categories, as well as expand its private label business.