Shopify CTO Mikhail Parakhin is stepping down after a little more than two years and will stay on as an advisor, Shopify confirmed to BetaKit after an anonymous X post first reported the move. Shopify didn’t say why he’s leaving, when his last day is, or who will replace him, but a spokesperson credited him with helping the company improve its engineering and machine learning. Parakhin, a former Microsoft advertising and web services CEO and Yandex CTO, joined Shopify in late 2024 to lead its AI work, and he oversaw its push to build AI tools for merchants and use AI internally to speed up product development.
