#219 – OpenAI Images, Amazon Interests, & FedEx Easy Returns

by Shopifreaks | Mar 31, 2025 | Recent Newsletters

Hi Shopifreaks

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

Agital is an award winning e-commerce marketing agency that specializes in driving revenue for brands and retailers by optimizing their presence on search engines, social media, and paid advertising channels.

Here are some of the services Agital offers:

Social Commerce – Agital can help your brand harness the immense power of TikTok Shop, YouTube Shopping, influencers, and live shopping to put you on the fast track to revenue growth outside of your own D2C site.
Paid Search – Agital's team of experts utilizes a full-funnel approach to establish visibility for your brand, drive sales, and get your customers to buy again through remarketing.
Social Media Marketing – From Facebook and Instagram to TikTok and Pinterest, Agital can not only help increase your brand's awareness and consideration, but also invite conversions and create brand advocates.
E-commerce SEO – Agital's SEO specialists analyze your challenges, product lines, and target audiences to craft a strategy that drives real results, with a proven track record across platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento.
Marketplace Expansion – Advance your brand and product sales across e-commerce marketplaces including Amazon, Walmart, Wayfair, Target, Ulta, and more.
E-mail & SMS – Tie all your marketing efforts together across all your channels with powerful e-mail and SMS marketing strategies that nurture your subscribers and drive revenue.

Agital prides itself on challenging the status quo and embracing innovation and agility to propel your business toward measurable, impactful results.

✨ Here are a few things that stand out about Agital:

They have a proven track record of success with over 26 years in the business.
Agital works with in-house creatives, analysts, and ad managers across six US offices.
They've worked with prominent brands like HP, Cisco, and Jelly Belly, with case studies to demonstrate their results.
Agital helped generate over $2.5 billion in online sales for their clients in the last year alone.
They are a 4 time SEO Agency of the Year Award winner
Agital works with all the major platforms including Shopify, BigCommerce, Salesforce, Wix, WooCommerce, Magento, Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and more.

🚀 Ready to elevate your e-commerce marketing strategy? Partner with Agital today!

Visit www.agital.com to explore their e-commerce marketing services or reach out to their team for a personalized consultation.

You can also contact Agital's Director of Partnerships, Sam Bessey directly at [email protected] or on LinkedIn to explore working together.

💻 RSVP to Agital's upcoming webinar:

Agital is holding a free webinar next week on April 9th covering rising ad costs and how to create smarter e-commerce strategies to stay profitable. If you're interested in learning more about Agital and the results they bring clients, I highly recommend attending this webinar. Worst case is that you learn something new!

And now, onto our regularly scheduled programming…

In this week's edition I cover:

OpenAI's new image-generation
Amazon launches AI-powered Interests
FedEx launches Easy Returns
BNPL's get a free pass
Perplexity makes it easier to sell
Commercetools debuts Payment Hub
France, Germany, and Italy get TikTok Shop
Instacart introduces Store View
Louis DeJoy steps down from USPS
Utah passes an age verification law for apps
Meta introduces principal-based buying

All this and more in this week's 219th Edition of Shopifreaks. Thanks for subscribing and sharing!

Stat of the Week

Last year, funding into African startups surpassed $2B. TechCrunch put a spotlight on the continent's biggest startups based on valuation:

Flutterwave ($3B) – a payment solutions provider that facilitates transactions between African consumers, businesses, and international markets
oPay ($2B) – a provider of digital financial services including mobile payments, savings, lending, and bill payments
Wave ($1.7B) – a fintech that offers low-cost mobile money services to make banking more accessible to customers in Africa
Andela ($1.5B) – a global talent marketplace that connects companies with vetted, skilled software engineers, product managers, and other tech professionals
TymeBan ($1.5B) – a digital bank that provides transactional accounts, savings products, and cash advances to lower-income individuals and businesses
Chipper Cash ($1.25B) – a platform that allows users to send and receive money across African countries

I'm starting to see a trend here!

1. OpenAI upgrades its image-generation feature (finally)

OpenAI announced a long-awaited upgrade to ChatGPT's image generation capabilities, which haven't seen any improvements in over a year.

I'll be first to say that ChatGPT's previous image-generation capabilities were awful! I can' tell you how many times I almost cancelled my Plus subscription over frustrations with its image tools, which couldn't follow simple instructions, were incapable of including text in images (or excluding text if requested), and had no way of building upon previous designs.

Now ChatGPT users can leverage the company's GPT-4o model, which up until now, has only been able to generate and edit text. Altman said that GPT-4o image generation is live in both ChatGPT and Sora, its video-generation product, for Pro, Plus, and free plan users, with Enterprise and Edu access coming soon.

I was able to access it on my $20/month Plus plan, however, advanced image-generation requires a 7 minute cooldown period if you use it too much. I can relate…

GPT-4o with image output “thinks” longer than the image-generation of DALL-E 3, the model it effectively replaces, to create more accurate and detailed images. The output is worth the wait in my opinion.

Other improvements include:

Accurate text rendering, precisely following prompts that leverage 4o's knowledge base.
Ability to upload images to transform or use as visual inspiration.
Character consistency, allowing users to create multiple images of the same character in different positions or scenes, such as when generating comics.
The ability to upload and restyle images.
The option to create images with transparent backgrounds, which is helpful when creating logos, badges, or elements for use in other image applications.
Ability to handle up to 20 objects at a time per image-generation.
The ability to make code-generated images, infographics, product instructions, and other visual guides that combine text and images.

Although the image-generation itself is significantly better than before, it's still like pulling teeth to get ChatGPT to produce images that don't “violate its content policy” — even though my requests never do.

For example, I uploaded a product photo from our website of a model wearing our leggings and sports bra and asked ChatGPT to create a lifestyle photo by placing the model on top of a mountain scene, close up on the model with the landscape slightly out of focus in the background.

First ChatGPT told me this was request was a policy violation and didn't make the image. Then I slightly adjusted the request, indicating that it was our company's product photo, and asked how I could change the prompt to move forward. It told me it couldn't and that I was in violation of its content policy.

Then I wrote a whole new version of the prompt, and ChatGPT told me I had to wait 3 more minutes because I hit a rate limit. I asked, “How did I hit a rate limit? You haven't generated a single image yet for me.” To which it replied, “Shut up, I make the rules” and posted this meme.

Finally I got ChatGPT to create the image, but instead of using the photo I uploaded, it recreated both the woman and our apparel (removing our name and logo from the clothing). Next I explicitly told it to use the exact image of the woman from my uploaded photo, and at most to adjust the lighting and levels to match the background it created — and it still screwed up. Several more attempts (and 45 minutes later), and ChatGPT told me to go find my own mountain image.

So it seems to be good at creating original image concepts from scratch, but not quite there yet when it comes to editing real product images.

It's only been released for a few days, but in what ways are you already using ChatGPT's new image-generation? Hit reply and let me know.

2. Amazon launches Interests and Health AI to enhance product discovery

Amazon is introducing an AI-powered feature called Interests to help customers discover products on its marketplace.

Here's how it works:

Shoppers enter a conversational description of what they're looking to buy.
They can either enter a specific type of item like “lawn chairs” or a broad category such as “computer accessories.”
They can also input their pricing preferences such as “cheap” or “under $100.”
From there, Interests generates an alert whenever products that meet the provided criteria become available on Amazon.
The feature detects both new product launches as well as when an out-of-stock item returns to the marketplace.
Amazon says the feature can also help customers track deals.

That sounds like it can get it could get overwhelming very quickly!

“Hey Paul, there's a new webcam on Amazon! Hey Paul, there's a new trackball on Amazon! Hey Paul, there's a new…” SHUTUP AMAZON! Silence notifications! (Oh wait, I already did that years ago…) I'll give Amazon the benefit of the doubt and assume that it works a lot better than that, although I haven't been able to test it personally.

Interests is currently available to a small subset of US customers via Amazon's Android and iOS apps, with plans to roll out to the rest of the US in the coming months.

Alongside the launch of Interests, Amazon also debuted a new service called Health AI that can answer health and wellness related questions and recommend relevant products. Responses sometimes include a badge that says the information was “reviewed by US-based licensed clinicians.”

Lastly, Amazon updated its Amazon Photos app to allow users to search their photo library to find similar products on Amazon Marketplace. Panos Panay, senior VP of Amazon's Devices and Services, posted on X, “Spot something you loved at a friend's house or a toy your kid was obsessed with? Just search your photos and we'll resurface relevant items for you.”

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said last month that employees have built or are in the process of building around 1,000 gen-AI applications across the company, so we'll likely be reading more news like this in the near future.

3. FedEx launches a Happy Returns competitor

FedEx is launching Easy Returns, a consolidated returns service that consumers can use to return products box-free and label-free at 3,000 FedEx Office and Kohl's locations across the US, using a QR code to complete the drop-off process. From there, FedEx consolidates the returns and delivers them back to merchants in one shipment. The technology is powered by Blue Yonder, a Scottsdale-based provider of digital supply chain management solutions.

FedEx initially launched a consolidated returns service back in 2023, and the new Easy Returns service expands on that existing network of return locations.

If that service sounds familiar, it's because UPS and Amazon have offered similar drop off return services for many years, and DHL recently entered the game. Happy Returns, the most recognized name in the game after Amazon, launched in 2015, was acquired by PayPal in 2021, and then sold to UPS in 2023. Then DHL Supply Chain acquired Inmar Supply Chain Solutions earlier this year to help grow its reverse logistics services — a solution that is in desperate need of a rebrand. Happy Returns… Easy Returns… Inmar Supply Chain Solutions. LOL.

FedEx already offers other return options, but said that its new Easy Returns service helps merchants reduce packaging expenses and the amount of returns in transit they need to track, whereas their other solutions ship packages individually.

Easy Returns is designed for lightweight items that can fit in a poly bag, such as clothing and small accessories, and the service is geared towards merchants seeing 3,000 returns or more per year.

Can we take a moment to appreciate Kohl's — whose new slogan must be “The More You Return, the More You Kohl's”?

At this point, processing returns is what Kohl's is best known for amongst many consumers. Kohl's began accepting Amazon returns in October 2017, initially piloting the program in Chicago and Los Angeles before expanding the partnership nationwide in July 2019.

Ironically, Kohl's just announced earlier this month that they are going to stop taking Amazon returns, at least temporarily, at some locations. I guess to make room for FedEx returns?

4. BNPL providers get a free pass from regulation

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced plans to withdraw its May 2024 rule that subjected BNPL providers to the same regulations as credit card providers under the Truth in Lending Act, including the right to dispute charges and demand a refund from the lender after returning a product, as well as provide periodic billing statements like the ones received for classic credit card accounts.

The rule took effect at the end of last July, but BNPL providers were given additional time to update their operations in compliance. Now BNPL providers don't have to worry anymore about compliance, as the rules have been withdrawn prior to when enforcement began.

The move comes as part of a broader pullback of regulations by the Trump administration that were initiated during the Biden administration.

The new regulations implemented last year were ill-fitted to regulate BNPL, faced immediate opposition from BNPL providers, and led to a lawsuit filed by the Financial Technology Association that argued that the CFPB exceeded its authority in issuing the rules.

It's not necessarily a complete loss for consumers that the rules were repealed. Unfortunately though, I don't imagine we'll see any new better-fitted regulation proposed anytime soon, as Trump is seeking to dismantle the agency altogether.

In fact, last week, the CFPB just barely escaped death by 1,000 executive orders. A federal judge agreed Friday to temporarily block the Trump administration from dismantling the CFPB until she rules on the merits of a lawsuit seeking to preserve the agency.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said in her order:

“If the defendants are not enjoined, they will eliminate the agency before the Court has the opportunity to decide whether the law permits them to do it, and as the defendants’ own witness warned, the harm will be irreparable.”

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created in 2011 under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act following the 2007-2008 financial crisis to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive, or abusive practices by financial institutions after the financial crisis exposed the need for such a dedicated agency.

5. Perplexity teams up with Firmly.ai to grow Buy with Pro

Perplexity AI, an Amazon-backed startup building an AI search engine to compete with Google and OpenAI, is working with Firmly.ai, a Seattle-based tech startup that enables instant purchasing capabilities across various platforms, to help make it easier for brands to start selling goods directly through its shopping results.

Quick Backstory: Last fall, Perplexity launched a shopping assistant called “Buy with Pro” for its paid customers in the US that offers shopping recommendations as well as the ability to place an order without going to a retailer's website. The tool enables users to ask questions like “Which sunscreen with SPF 50 or higher offers moisturizing properties?” to begin their shopping journey, and then it searches the web and presents them with visual cards that have details of the product. The user can then tap on the card to view more information like reviews and key features, and subsequently purchase the item with one click, without ever visiting the website, using their saved payment and shipping info.

Perplexicty CEO Dmitry Shevelenko told Fortune that more than 150 merchants have expressed interest in selling products through its AI search platform since launching the tool in November. However in order to expand the shopping experience more rapidly to new merchants, it needed a tech partner that could help it easily connect with all of them through a single integration that provides a good checkout experience and lets retailers still control the customer data and the transaction itself — which is where Firmly.ai comes in.

With a single integration to Firmly.ai's API, Perplexity can now connect to any e-commerce merchant, who can tap into this new sales channel instantly while retaining their merchant of record status and control over transactions, and customer data.

Shevelenko said:

“When we first launched our AI experience for shopping late last year, Perplexity took a leap towards transforming the way people shop online and increased the volume of shopping-intent queries 5x. Partnering with Firmly.ai enables us to achieve our vision even faster by making it effortless for merchants to join us and easier for more consumers to natively go from answers to actions within Perplexity.”

Shevelenko added that the AI search startup is still working through the best ways to surface product recommendations without turning its users off by pushing them to buy, buy, buy!

6. Commercetools launches Payment Hub

Commercetools introduced Payment Hub, a new platform designed to give enterprises greater autonomy and control over their payment strategy by enabling them to negotiate directly with payment service providers. Payment Hub offers pre-built integrations and a simplified setup process with major payment service providers so that merchants are never locked into one provider.

The company wrote in its press release:

“As more commerce platforms shift to payments-first business models — where merchants are charged high transaction fees to subsidize software costs — commercetools takes a different approach. Unlike competitors that skim revenue through GMV-based fees, commercetools gives its customers full transparency and control over their payments with a commerce-friendly order processing model.”

They're talking about Shopify, which either gets a piece of all transactions that pass through its Shopify Payments network or charges merchants a transaction fee to use third-party providers, which nullifies any savings. The only real control Shopify gives merchants over what rate they pay to process payments is to choose which Shopify plan they're on — with the more costlier tiers reducing your payment processing rates.

Commercetools aims to be different by giving merchants full control over their payment service providers, lowering payment processing costs by enabling merchants to negotiate directly with providers, and allowing merchants to activate or deactivate payment service providers as they please.

So basically what BigCommerce has been doing since inception.

Alongside the launch of Payment Hub, the company announced that it has deepened its alliance with Stripe, positioning the payments provider as the inaugural global payment service provider to integrate with Payment Hub.

7. TikTok Shop launches in France, Germany, and Italy

TikTok Shop is launching to users in France, Germany, and Italy today, expanding its reach further in Europe as it faces a potential ban in the US if ByteDance does not find (or agree to) an American buyer.

Jan Wilk, head of operations at TikTok Shop UK said:

“My own expectation for Europe is to launch with more speed than we did in the UK, because in the UK four years ago this model was very new, we had to do a lot of education, we had to try out a lot of things to get the right fit.”

TikTok shared that it's already got big sellers onboard in its new territories, including the supermarket chain Carrefour in France and the fast-fashion retailer AboutYou and cosmetics brand Cosnova in Germany.

TikTok Shop first began piloting live shopping features in Indonesia as far back as 2021 before expanding its e-commerce tests to Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia in early 2022. That same year, TikTok Shop launched officially in Indonesia and began beta testing in the UK. It was officially launched to the US market in September 2023.

In China, the local version of TikTok called Douyin generated $490B in GMV in 2024, versus TikTok's $30B last year.

But it's not good enough…

Business Insider reported last week that ByteDance leaders are unhappy with the state of TikTok's US e-commerce business, according to nine current and former employees. The app's shopping division failed to hit its goals in the US last year, and leadership is cracking down, singling out the US team as underperforming.

Although the company regularly reports its e-commerce wins, including crossing $100M in single-day sales on Black Friday, behind-the-scenes ByteDance is broadly unsatisfied with US e-commerce performance. Staffers say that no matter how hard they work, they can never achieve what they feel are unattainable goals set by the company.

8. Instacart introduces Store View to check product availability

Instacart is introducing a way for shoppers to make money taking videos of store shelves one aisle at a time through a new service called Store View, which allows the platform to determine which products are available and which ones are out of stock. The tool will also help its predictive models estimate when a store will restock a particular product.

The company's AI shopping carts, Caper Carts, will also be able to assist with tracking live inventory in the future using their sensors and cameras to recognize items on shelves.

Instacart is planning to launch Store View with select retailers in the coming weeks, with plans to roll it out to more US and Canadian stores later in the year.

Wouldn't it be cheaper and more effective to install permanent Instacart cameras on the aisles?

Instacart also revealed a new feature called Second Store Check — which shoppers are going to love (he said sarcastically).

Second Store Check introduces the ability to ask a second shopper at a nearby store if the item is available there instead. Instacart didn't specify in their announcement what comes next, but I imagine that the two shoppers either need to link up to exchange products, or the second shopper will need to delivery that item to the original customer as well.

9. Other e-commerce news of interest

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy stepped down from his role last Monday, preempting a decision by President Trump to force him out of the position faster than planned. Dejoy announced in February that he would resign, but hadn't yet given an exact departure date, and in the meantime, continued to carry out his 10-year turnaround plan for the Postal Service. Deputy Postmaster General Doug Tulino will serve as interim postmaster general until a permanent replacement is appointed.

Meta is exploring a new approach to ad sales where large agency holding companies buy its ad inventory in bulk and resell it at a markup, a model known as principal-based buying. This strategy allows Meta to leverage agencies' sales force and secure a larger share of ad revenue, while ensuring its platforms remain prominent in media plans. In the past, this approach has raised concerns about transparency and trust, but Meta sees it as a way to protect its ad revenue in light of a potential economic downturn.

Utah passed a law that requires app stores like Google's Play store and Apple's App Store to verify user ages instead of putting that burden on each individual app, something that Meta, Snap, and X have long pushed for. The App Store Accountability Act, which requires Apple and Google to confirm the age of anyone who creates an account in Utah, is set to take effect on May 7th, but is expected to face legal challenges. Supports say the law gives parents more centralized control over what their kids can download, while opponents say the law raises privacy concerns.

The EU is pressing Meta to either create a separate version of its Facebook Marketplace or offer users a way to access rival services in order to resolve antitrust concerns. Regulators also urged Meta not to use non-public data from competitors' classified ads in order to improve its own products, according to a decision that was made in November but made public last week. The listed remedies are only suggestions from EU regulators, but give an indication as to how they believe Meta's alleged antitrust infringements could be brought to an end.

Amazon is testing changing the name of its Echo smart devices to Alexa, according to instances on Amazon marketplace product listings that display the name of the Echo Show 5 as the Alexa Show 5. A company spokesperson said not to read too much into the tests, and that the company was simply experimenting with different ways to help customers find the devices. I've been saying this for a while — Amazon needs to lean harder into the Alexa name-recognition. Forget about “Rufus” and “Echo,” Alexa should follow me across the entire Amazon ecosystem as my personal point of contact with Amazon products and services. Maybe they're finally listening to me? Or maybe some intern wrote the listing wrong?

BigCommerce unveiled enhancements to its B2B products aimed at improving efficiency for sales teams. The updates include Configure-Price-Quote, to streamline quoting processes, Multi-Company Account Hierarchy, and Advanced Permissioning, which give better access controls and reporting to companies with multiple branches. The updates are designed to simplify the quoting process, reduce manual tasks, and provide better management of complex buyer structures, enabling faster decision-making and growth for B2B merchants.

Amazon is extending its Prime Day sales event to four days this year, marking the longest in the company's history. A memo to third-party sellers wrote, “For 2025, we decided two days just wasn’t long enough,” and noted that the extended timeline “will allow more customers even more time to shop and discover millions of deals.” The change follows Amazon's record-breaking Prime Day in 2024, when US shoppers spent $14.2B during the 48-hour sales event. I guess, why not have it 4 days, when Temu is doing Prime Day year round? Why not 6?

FedEx expanded its Sunday home delivery services again due to demand from its largest customers, now able to reach two-thirds of the US population on Sunday, up from 50% previously. The courier previously offered Sunday home delivery to nearly 95% of the US population, but it began scaling back its coverage in 2022 and 2023. FedEx says that Sunday delivery gives it a competitive edge over UPS, which doesn't offer delivery on that day. Do we really need 7 day-a-week delivery? Can drivers have one dedicated day off to spend with their families or read a book?

Amazon laid off around 200 support staffers who work with FBA merchants, likely to replace them with its Project Amelia AI chatbot that was revealed in September last year, which can help resolve issues for merchants, including tracking and monitoring their inventory in Amazon warehouses. A spokesperson said, “We will also continue to offer the same level of support and services to our selling partners; they will not be impacted by these changes.” Maybe it won't be all bad. I mean, Amazon Seller support can't get any worse, can it?

YouTube Premium is testing a feature that lets subscribers share up to 10 ad-free videos with their friends each month. The goal is to give more free users a taste of the ad-free experience, with hopes that it lures them into paying for a premium subscription. The experiment is currently limited to Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Turkey, and the UK, but may launch worldwide if deemed a success.

Target executives laid out plans to grow its invite-only third-party marketplace, Target Plus, from $1B in GMV to more than $5B within five years. The company's strategy is to work with partners that complement its assortment and provide more options, particularly in the home category where it can offer bulkier items that customers would not easily be able to load into their cars at store. Target's chief commercial officer, Rick Gomez, said, “Rather than opening the doors to any seller, we’re focused on building relevance and trust by working with partners that complement our assortment and also help us provide more of the breadth consumers are looking for, ensuring we’re a strong option in categories where we wouldn’t otherwise have a big presence.”

Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke shifted his perspective on work-life balance, now claiming he works over 10 hours a day and on weekends, after previously sharing in 2019 that he only worked 40 hours a week and declaring that working 80 hours a week is not mandatory for success in a now-deleted tweet. Earlier this month he posted on X in response to a thread about work-life balance, “Yea, but this is commonly misunderstood. I’m at home for dinner, but I work at least 10 or so hours a day and a lot of the weekend. I don’t want people to get misguided by this meme.”

Shoptalk Luxe, a first-time luxury retail event scheduled for January 2026 in Abu Dhabi that brings together industry leaders to discuss innovations in premium retail and customer experiences, announced the creation of an advisory board and released more names of its global launch partners. Executives from Kering, Mytheresa, Breitling, and Loro Piana are among the people confirmed to the event's advisory board, who will lend strategic insight, help shape the agenda, and ensure the event delivers maximum value to our community of change-makers.

TikTok is expanding its Smart+ Catalog Ads to website and app promotions within a single campaign to include conversions in both formats, as part of an effort to help brands drive outcomes across more of their promotions. The platform is also adding new elements to its GMV Max feature, which automates campaign creation on TikTok Shop, which the company says has tripled the number of shoppers every month since its launch.

Splitit, a payment platform that allows consumers to pay for purchases in interest-free monthly installments using their existing credit cards, launched an embedded Shopify app called Splitit Card Installments that gives customers the option to pay by installments directly within the credit card section. Unlike traditional BNPL providers, Splitit allows shoppers to use their existing credit card at checkout without the need to apply for or take out a new loan.

Amazon India is removing referral fees on over 12M products priced below ₹300 across 135 categories, starting April 7th, to “support small businesses” selling on the platform. Currently, these sellers pay referral fees ranging from 2% to 16%. Additionally, Amazon India is reducing national shipping rates for sellers using external fulfillment channels like Easy Ship and Seller Fox, lowering the cost from ₹77 to ₹65. This is antitrust at its finest. Amazon isn't supporting anyone but its own agenda in the country with these moves, undercutting competitors to the point of losing money on sales in order to gain market share. Mark my words — India's government is going to put an end to it.

Beyond Inc, the company formerly known as Overstock.com that now owns Bed Bath & Beyond, Buy Buy Baby, and Zulily, is relaunching its BuyBuy Baby brand online on May 8th and simultaneously hosting a “Baby Days” sales event, featuring baby essentials, registry picks, and daily giveaways. Beyond also announced that it is launching a crowdfunding offering of a tokenized digital security that's linked to BuyBuy Baby's IP, as a means to offer digital dividends to current holders of Beyond and new investors. So like a meme coin tied to its brand value?

BigCommerce hired Andrew Norman as its new senior VP and general manager for EMEA, tasked with leading the company's go-to-market strategy in the region. Norman brings 25 years of experience executing international expansion plans for SaaS companies, including 15 years in the e-commerce market, most recently at Sendcloud, where he led the enterprise, UK, and partner teams.

Facebook is bringing back a Friends tab that filters out algorithmically recommended posts and only shows your friends' stories, reels, posts, and birthdays. The new tab is rolling out in the US and Canada, accessible via a tab from the navigation bar in the Facebook app. As part of its mission to get back to its roots, Meta said it will be adding “several OG Facebook experiences throughout the year.”

The FTC announced that two operators of an alleged e-commerce business opportunity scam have agreed to settle charges and turn over the $12M profits they made from the operation. Trevor Duffy Young and Wessam Baiz, who are associated with Lunar Capital Ventures, Ecom Genie, Profitable Automation, and Valiant Consultants, will also be banned from marketing and selling business opportunities in the future.

EU regulators are expected to issue relatively modest fines against Apple and Meta this week when compared to antitrust penalties of the past, according to Bloomberg sources. The move is seen as an attempt to enforce the EU's digital rules while avoiding creating more tension between the EU and President Trump, who warned that he'd strike back with heavy tariffs following any “disproportionate” penalties against American tech firms. Are all those inauguration fund donations by Big Tech making more sense now?

Temu is inviting Australian merchants to sell on its platform as part of its new local-to-local model, which the company has launched in more than a dozen markets including the US. The company says that the addition of local sellers means customers will be able to enjoy a broader product selection on the platform from Australian businesses and manufactures. Temu launched in Australia in March 2023, but up until now, only allowed Chinese sellers on its platform.

ByteDance is shutting down its Notes app on May 8th, less than a year after its launch to compete with Instagram and other photo-sharing apps. A notification in the app encourages users to check out the company's other apps, including Lemon8, in order to continue their “creative journey.” Since Notes app's release last year, image sharing has become more prevalent on TikTok, making the Notes app redundant.

Block laid off 931 workers, or around 8% of its staff, citing strategic and performance-related reasons. The layoffs were divided into three categories: 391 for strategy, 460 for performance issues, and 80 managers to flatten the company's hierarchy. Despite the cuts, CEO Jack Dorsey emphasized that the layoffs were not financially motivated or aimed at replacing workers with AI, but were instead due to shifting business needs and a focus on improving performance.

IBM is set to cut around 9,000 jobs in the US this year, with a significant portion of the affected roles expected to shift to India, according to The Register sources. The layoffs will impact several divisions, including the company's Cloud Classic unit, which will see about a quarter of its team outsourced. Employees from consulting, corporate social responsibility, cloud infrastructure, sales and internal systems are also expected to be impacted.

TikTok promoted Khartoon Weiss, its current VP of global business solutions, to lead sales in North America, filling a role left vacant by Samir Singh in February. Weiss has been with TikTok for more than four years and will oversee sales operations for the app as it faces a potential ban in the US. Her appointment follows a string of recent departures.

Amazon announced that Jennifer Salke is stepping down as the head of MGM Studios, which the company acquired in 2022 for around $8.45B. Amazon does not intend to fill Salke's role and instead, the heads of its film and TV studios will report directly to Mike Hopkins, who oversees both MGM Studios and Prime Video.

President Trump said that he would consider reducing tariffs on China to encourage a deal for the sale of TikTok to an American company, as well as extend the April 5th deadline to do so. He acknowledged the role China will play in getting any deal done, including giving its approval, saying “maybe I’ll give them a little reduction in tariffs or something to get it done.” Meanwhile, Blackstone is evaluating making a minority investment in TikTok's US operations, according to Reuters sources, joining ByteDance's existing non-Chinese shareholders including Susquehanna International Group and General Atlantic in contributing fresh capital to the bid.

23andMe, a personal genomics company known for its consumer DNA testing kits that I warned friends and family against using for years, filed for bankruptcy after struggling for several years with weak demand for its ancestry testing kits and a 2023 data breach that damaged its reputation. The company's shares fell 50% to $0.88 on Monday after co-founder Anne Wojcicki, who made multiple failed takeover bids, resigned as CEO. The company did not say whether there were other interested bidders, but will continue to operate during the sale process, having secured $35M in financing over the weekend.

Etsy debuted a new TV commercial entitled “Don't Celebrate Birthdays,” sticking with its marketing message that Etsy is a destination for gift shopping. The ad features guests at a birthday party, showering a character named Julia with personal gifts including a snack tray, earrings, and artwork of her dog. At the end of the objectively forgettable commercial, the narrator sings, “Gifts that say I get you.”

A US judge rejected Elon Musk's bid to dismiss a lawsuit claiming he defrauded former Twitter shareholders by waiting too long to disclose his initial investment in the company. The judge said that the shareholders adequately pleaded that Musk intended to commit fraud through an improper regulatory filing, misleading tweets about Twitter's future, and a strategy to “silently” build his Twitter stake. Plaintiffs claim Musk ignored an SEC deadline of March 24, 2022 to reveal he had bought 5% of Twitter shares, and then waited 11 more days before revealing his 9.2% stake in an SEC filing, which saved him more than $200M, and harmed them because they sold Twitter shares at artificially low prices. Twitter shares rose 27% on April 4, 2022 after Musk revealed his 9.2% stake.

🏆 This Week's Most Ridiculous Story… Meta is moving forward with its “Fair Use” defense. The company asked a US court to rule that it did not violate copyright law when it used illegally torrented books to train its AI system, arguing that its use was transformative, training Llama to “serve as a personal tutor on nearly any subject, assist with creative ideation, and help users to generate business reports, translate conversations, analyze data, write code, and compose poems or letters to friends.” On that logic, I can illegally download any book I want, as long as I transformatively use the information after I read it to serve as a personal tutor. The crazy part is — it would've cost Meta an inconsequential amount of money to a company that large if they had just BOUGHT the books! Personally, I hope they get burned for this and it ends up costing them a lot more than it would have.

10. Seed rounds, IPOs, & acquisitions

Elon Musk's xAI acquired Elon Musk's X for $45B, which is $1B more than Musk paid for Twitter when he took it private 2022. Musk posted on X, “xAI and X's futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent.” Musk did not ask investors for approval, but told them that the two companies had been collaborating closely and that the deal would drive deeper integration with Grok. Essentially this deal gives xAI the ability to use all user generated content on X's platform to train its AI models without technically sharing data with third parties.

Chord, a San Francisco-based customer data platform that helps businesses unify and analyze their customer data to drive personalized marketing and improve customer engagement, raised $5.5M in a round led by M13, breaking its total amount raised to $40M. The company will use the funds to further develop its new AI orchestration platform, which helps companies automate marketing decisions without having to rely on manual data crunching.

Burbank, a Welsch fintech that offers financial services aimed at helping businesses and consumers manage their finances more efficiently, raised £5M in a round led by Mouro Capital. The funds will be used to launch a new online payment technology called Card-Present over Internet (CPol), which is the world's first PCI-certified tech enabling card-present transactions online that allows consumers to tap their card to their mobile device and enter their PIN, just like in stores.

Crystl, a San Francisco-based B2B commerce network that streamlines EDI processes and supply chain compliance, raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A round led by Mosaic General Partnership and Cohen Circle Fintech Ventures, bringing its total amount raised to over $10M. The company will use the funds to accelerate the expansion of its AI-native solution for brands and manufacturers, enabling businesses to expand beyond D2C into wholesale, marketplaces, and omnichannel retail.

Braze, a New York City-based customer engagement platform that enables brands to deliver personalized, cross-channel marketing experiences to customers, is acquiring OfferFit, a Boston-based AI decisioning company that automates personalized marketing by making individual-level decisions to optimize customer engagement metrics, for $325M. The acquisition will deepen Braze's AI capabilities, allowing for more sophisticated, personalized customer experiences and advancing its Project Catalyst initiative to optimize customer journeys and content.

Infinite Reality, a Norwalk-based company specializing in immersive 3D experiences, AI, and spatial computing to enhance digital media and e-commerce, acquired Napster, the peer-to-peer file-sharing service that revolutionized digital music distribution before ceasing operations in 2001, for $207M. Since its closure in 2001 due to legal issues, Napster has changed hands and directions multiple times — from being rebranded as a legal, subscription-based music service to a niche, social music platform. Infinite Reality plans to transform it into a metaverse-connected social music platform, featuring virtual concerts and enhanced artist-fan interactions. Read my detailed history of Napster on LinkedIn.

Dollar Tree is selling the Family Dollar retail chain, which it acquired for $8.5B in 2015, for $1B to two private-equity firms. Dollar Tree CEO Mike Creedon said that the two companies were “two different businesses with limited synergies” that were better off on their own, citing a number of reasons for Family Dollar's difficulties, including low-income shoppers who were dealing with inflation, competition with Dollar General and Walmart, and opening too many stores too quickly.

eToro, an Israeli social trading platform that allows users to invest in assets like stocks and cryptocurrencies, filed for an IPO, several years after scrapping its plans to go public in 2022. The company says that the IPO will provide it with the flexibility to expand beyond crypto to “capture the generational opportunities opening up from the rise of the retail investor globally.” In March 2023, eToro raised $250M at a $3.5B valuation.

Droom, an Indian marketplace for buying and selling automobiles, raised $3M in a round co-led by India Accelerator and Finvolve. The company plans to use the funds to improve its tech infrastructure, accelerate customer acquisition, and expand its footprint in India, as well as expedite its decision to refile for an IPO later this year.

WunderGraph, an open-source platform that simplifies API management by unifying multiple APIs into a single, type-safe GraphQL API, raised $7.5M in a Series A round led by eBay Ventures, Karma Ventures, and Aspenwood Ventures. The company plans to use the funds to grow its 20-person workforce and double down on its open source GraphQL federation with additional tools that help support collaboration and governance for larger enterprises. Co-founder Stefan Avram said, “We’re building the essential plumbing for the world’s biggest platforms, and this funding allows us to scale while keeping our commitment to open source development.”

Bought, a Finnish startup that simplifies secondhand fashion sales by automating listing creation, raised $1.5M in a pre-seed round led by Lifeline Ventures and Wave Ventures. Alongside the funding round, the company announced its acquisition of Zadaa, a Nordic secondhand fashion marketplace, which will integrate its community of 500k users into the new platform.

Arcade, a generative AI marketplace that enables users to design custom physical products by transforming text or image prompts into manufacturable items, raised $25M in a Series A round led by Canaan Partners and Forerunner Ventures, bringing its total amount raised to $42M. Alongside the fundraise, the company announced its launch into the home goods category, marking its first expansion from its beta launch in jewelry a few months ago.

KCB Group, Kenya’s largest commercial bank, is acquiring a 75% stake in Riverbank Solutions, a payments solutions startup, for $15.4M. The acquisition marks KCB's latest move to expand its footprint amid growing competition in Kenya's banking sector, hoping it will increase its ability to offer integrated digital services to banks and e-commerce platforms.

OpenAI is close to finalizing a new $40B funding round led by SoftBank, with participation from Magnetar Capital, Coatue Management, Founders Fund, and Altimeter Capital Management, at a $300B valuation. SoftBank will initially put in $7.5B, with an additional $2.5B coming from an investor syndicate.