#238 – Shopify takes over the world, Yotpo quits e-mail / SMS, & ChatGPT-5

by Paul Drecksler | Aug 11, 2025 | Recent Newsletters

Hi Shopifreaks

I'm finally back home in Cuenca, Ecuador after spending a few weeks in Western North Carolina. It's nice to be back! Now I just need to work on losing that 10 pounds that the U.S. donated to my belly. 🤣 I almost forgot how big the portions are…

I've got a huge, jam-packed, incredible issue for you today that I'm excited for you to read, so let's skip the intro and dive right in.

One quick request first: Forward this e-mail to one colleague or founder that you think would get value from receiving Shopifreaks in their Inbox each week. Last week a new reader from a fintech wrote, “I can't believe it took me this long to find this newsletter!” Let's make sure your friends don't have to wait any longer to discover Shopifreaks either! Please and thank you for your help spreading the word.

In this week's edition I cover:

Shopify launches new commerce-everywhere tools
Yotpo gives up on e-mail & SMS
OpenAI launches three new models
Wix launches Shopify-esque financial products
TikTok crushes affiliate marketing with CJ
The impact of tariffs on international expansion
Meta says it's not a personal social network anymore
Drone delivery is headed your way
Apple's upgraded App Intents
Record high U.S. household debt (but GDP too)
Flexport abandons the little guy

All this and more in this week's 238th Edition of Shopifreaks. Thanks for subscribing and sharing!

Stat of the Week

Shopify stock rose 21% after posting strong Q2 revenue and announcing that the potential impact of President Trump's tariffs “did not materialize.” Gross merchandise sales grew 29% YoY to $87.8B, while net income jumped to $906M during the quarter, compared to $171M a year ago.

1. Shopify launches Checkout Kit, Catalog, & Universal Cart

Shopify launched three new tools aimed at making it easier for developers to embed e-commerce into their apps, websites, and AI bots without a lot of extra coding or having to deal with compliance management. Here's what's new:

Checkout Kit – embed commerce widgets and checkout directly into your agent and chat. Already in use by Microsoft’s Copilot.
Shopify Catalog – low latency global product search across millions of merchants.
Universal Cart – shop from any store, anywhere, in one cart.

CEO Tobias Lutke wrote on X:

“With these, you can build seamless embedded commerce experiences quickly, starting with all the best products by the best merchants in the world instead of having to sign them all up individually. No need to build a complex new checkout, or dealing with regulatory marketplace rules. Commerce just plugs in and feels seamless in conversations. We believe commerce should be everywhere people are, so we’re making that as easy as possible for the AI age.”

Last year I was pitched a product search website that was effectively trying to emulate what Shopify just launched to everyone — curating products from hundreds of thousands of Shopify stores and building a search layer and checkout experience on top of it. It was an interesting idea, but the work involved was incredibly resource intensive, requiring the platform to constantly crawl and scrape Shopify stores to build their database, and the checkout experience left a lot to be desired.

Now, with Shopify's new tools, anyone can easily and cost-effectively build a commerce layover on top of Shopify's product catalog.

The possibilities are endless, but here are a few examples:

Building niche marketplaces powered by products from Shopify merchants.
Shopping directly inside an AI chatbot or messenger app, without ever leaving the interface.
Shopping via voice assistants like Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant that pull from Shopify's catalog and complete purchases on your behalf.
Making in-game purchases of real-world merchandise from Shopify stores directly inside games or virtual worlds (which Shopify has been experimenting in the past with already).
Integration with business apps, such as a hotel app that lets guests book accommodation and buy local goods from Shopify-powered stores in the area, all within one flow.

The reach that these three new features bring Shopify merchants are unprecedented and will make it very difficult for merchants who want to tap into multiple “non-Amazon channels” to avoid Shopify moving forward. No other e-commerce platform offers anything like this.

What possibilities are most exciting for you about these feature releases? What challenges might the features bring for merchants? Hit reply and let me know or join the conversation on LinkedIn.

2. Yotpo exits E-mail & SMS five years after entering it

Yotpo, the Israeli-founded reviews and loyalty platform that branched into e-mail and SMS marketing in 2020, is exiting the e-mail / SMS market and laying off around 200 employees, or roughly 34% of its workforce.

The company entered into strategic partnerships with Attentive and Omnisend to takeover its e-mail & SMS customers, which are both offering free onboarding and migration for Yotpo customers and honoring Yotpo's cheaper pricing for at least one year. Several other e-mail marketing and SMS services also came out of the woodwork to offer similar deals for migrating Yotpo's customers.

Eli Weiss, VP of Retention Advocacy, posted on LinkedIn:

“This was not a decision made lightly. It was made with one goal in mind: doing what’s best for our customers. Focus is hard. Letting go is harder. But we believe sharper tools, faster execution, and deeper impact, especially in Reviews and Loyalty, are what the next chapter of retention demands.”

Now Yotpo is going back to its roots and doubling down on its reviews & loyalty platform, pivoting into an integration-first platform.

Here's what's on the radar next for Yotpo, according to their announcement:

AI-generated review summaries and sorting.
Reviews Atlas, a dashboard that lets merchants leverage review data to identify and implement meaningful actions across PDPs, SEO, and merchandizing.
AI-powered Multilingual widgets and insights.
LLM search optimization, and omni-channel integrations, aiming to significantly expand their integration ecosystem.
Next-gen Loyalty for memberships, subscriptions, and VIP programs, currently in beta.

Here's the only part of the move that pisses me off: Right now many companies are entering into their Q3/Q4 busy seasons, already planning or implementing their promotional strategies with their in-house teams or agencies. It's not the time to migrate to a different e-mail & SMS platform, which is such a crucial part of a merchant's tech stack.

For many of the smaller e-commerce merchants I work with ($300k – $3M range), they operate with extremely skeleton crews and don't have the capacity to migrate EMS platforms so quickly. If they can, it's a giant burden. In general, this is the time of year we typically make as few changes to our tech stacks as possible to avoid preventable interruptions during the season when downtime or hiccups matter most.

Flexport just made a similar move with the same deadline, and I criticized them equally for it. In general, I'm not a fan of major changes / deadlines being announced in August for the end of the year. It lacks an understanding or compassion for merchants.

Aside from that, I support and understand the strategic pivot, and I wish Yotpo the best of luck with it.

3. OpenAI launches ChatGPT-5 alongside two semi-open source models

Big news from OpenAI this week! The company released not only its long-awaited GPT 5 model, but also two semi-open source models called gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b. (Perhaps OpenAI should ask ChatGPT for help with naming their models. LOL)

First GPT-5 news…

OpenAI calls GPT-5 their “smartest, fastest, and most useful model yet, with thinking built in” and claims that it's better at coding, writing, and providing more useful health answers, and that it's safer and more accurate. It's now available to all users free and premium alike.

Updates for users include:

Personalities – select from Cynic, Robot, Listener, or Nerd for personalities ranging from efficient and emotionless to playful and curious.
Accent Colors – you no longer have to deal with ChatGPT in that sterile gray environment all day.
Voice improvements – it understands your instructions better and allows you to customize its speaking style.
Study mode – for step-by-step help learning a new subject.
Google integration – the ability to connect your Gmail and Google Calendar

Users weren't thrilled with the release, mostly because unlike in previous GPT model releases, OpenAI depreciated all of its other models with the launch of GPT-5 including 4o, 4.1, 4.5, 4.1-mini, o4-mini, o4-mini-high, o3, and o3-pro. During a Reddit AMA with Sam Altman on Friday, many users complained that GPT-5 wasn't working as well as 4o did and requested that they bring it back.

Altman explained that the reason GPT-5 seemed “dumber” was because the router wasn't working properly when it rolled out on Thursday, but now it'll seem smarter moving forward. However the requests to bring back 4o were so plentiful and persistent that Altman said he would look into it. However realistically people will just move on from 4o, and OpenAI will continue to improve GPT-5 based on user feedback.

Personally, I think GPT-5 works just as good or better as 4o, which couldn't seem to remember an instruction to save its life. What's been your experience with GPT-5 so far?

Now onto gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b news…

First it's important to note that the models are only semi-open, which means developers do not get the source code or training data.

The gpt-oss models come in two sizes: 120 billion and 20 billion parameters, which relate to how capable they are (higher is better). Both models are capable of running on the user's own computer while the smaller one, which is text-only, can run on a smartphone — which is an incredible feat!

The last time OpenAI released an open model was in 2019, with GPT-2, which was fully open sourced in stages over several months. OpenAI didn’t say whether gpt-oss will eventually be fully open-sourced as well.

In the meantime, the lack of ability to view the data that went into the model could prevent financial services, healthcare companies, and other highly regulated industries from adopting them because they lack the transparency needed for compliance purposes. However wouldn't they likely use OpenAI's non-open models anyway? Perhaps that's the goal.

In other AI news this week…

OpenAI reached an agreement with the U.S. General Services Administration to offer ChatGPT Enterprise for just $1 per agency next year, so effectively free, leading Google and Anthropic to be like “WTF man?!?”
The United Arab Emirates began offering its advanced Falcon AI programs completely free to position itself as a trusted alternative for developing nations. Rest of World wrote, “By offering free and open-source alternatives, the UAE is turning its petroleum profits into digital influence, and could become the go-between in a technology world split between the U.S. and China.”

4. Wix launches two new financial services for merchants

Wix launched Wix Checking and Wix Capital, two new financial services aimed to help merchants manage cash flow and fund growth.

Wix Checking is a fully integrated business checking account that is:

powered by fintech Unit's embedded finance solution
free to use for all merchants.
designed to offer a real-time view of cash flow and business performance
give merchants instant access to their earnings the moment a sale is completed
remove the need for external banking tools and manual reconciliations

To use their funds, merchants can either make purchases with the Wix Visa business debit card or transfer money to an external bank account. However at that point, they might as well continue to deposit funds directly into their external bank account.

Wix Capital is a revenue based financing solution that:

is designed to help businesses address cash flow gaps and unlock growth
offers a fast, flexible approach to secure funding over traditional banks
allows merchants to request a cash advance in exchange for a fixed fee and a percentage of future sales

Are either of these features revolutionary? Hardly!

Shopify has offered similar features with Shopify Capital and Shopify Balance since 2016 and 2021 respectively. I'm honestly surprised it took Wix so long to jump on the bandwagon, given the integration spree they've been on during the past few years. However better late than never.

5. TikTok launches new affiliate and influencer features

TikTok is absolutely crushing affiliate and influencer marketing in a way that no social network or entertainment platform has ever done before. This could have been Facebook and Instagram a decade ago if they weren't so obsessed with controlling the entire e-commerce catalog and shopping journey, which they failed miserably at.

Here's what's new:

TikTok launched TikTok Go, a new creator monetization program that lets influencers earn commissions or vouchers from local businesses like hotels and restaurants. To qualify, creators must be 18+ and have at least 1,000 followers on an account in good standing. The program is now available to hotels and creators in the U.S., Indonesia, & Japan.
TikTok partnered with Booking.com to allow users to select dates, view amenities, read reviews, view prices, and book rooms directly in the app. Each hotel has a dedicated landing page with information about accommodation, things to do nearby, and related TikTok videos about the property. Creators can also tag the hotel in videos. Effectively this is an extension of the TikTok Go program mentioned above, but specific to Booking.com. I imagine in the future there will be multiple hotel aggregators listed, similar to searching on Google.
CJ Affiliate launched a first-party integration with TikTok that lets publishers promote TikTok Shop products outside of the app. Previously, all links had to be promoted within the app itself, but through the integration, links can be shared across websites, blogs, newsletters, and other owned media. Sellers also gain the ability to track which off-app creators drove clicks and sales.

The last announcement above, about TikTok partnering with CJ Affiliate, is absolutely groundbreaking and a true “watch out” moment for Amazon, which has offered an affiliate program since 1996. Whereas before, TikTok Shop was limited by traffic sent from videos within the app or users browsing the in-app shop directly, now it opens the door for bloggers, newsletter operators, and even influencers on other platforms to drive traffic to TikTok Shop and earn a commission. I'm impressed!

6. New U.S. tariffs are not driving merchants to expand internationally

U.S. tariffs are not driving American sellers to expand internationally, according to new Marketplace Pulse data which found that 69.24% of Amazon sellers still operate in just one international marketplace, down from 69.36% four months ago. E-commerce accelerator Pattern reported a 47% increase in international expansion requests from brands since tariffs were announced, however the calls have not yet translated into changes.

Marketplace Pulse author Ben Donovan attributes the lack of movement to three factors:

“Tariffs alone are an insufficient incentive to overcome the practical barriers of international expansion.”
American sellers have historically shown a “limited appetite” for international expansion, accounting for less than 1% of the total sellers outside of North American marketplaces.
Traffic across Amazon's 22 non-U.S. marketplaces combined barely exceeds that of Amazon.com in the U.S., and sellers feel that it's simply not worth the effort.

I'd also add a few speculative reasons:

Expanding internationally is not an overnight effort. Simply adding a new sales channel within the U.S. is difficult enough for most merchants, even if using their same fulfillment methods, and expanding internationally adds even more hurdles.
Business owners don't trust Trump's tariff announcements. He's been so on-again off-again with the tariffs that most smaller merchants are waiting it out to see what happens. It's simply not cost-effective for a small business to be reactionary when the tariff landscape is changing so quickly and so extremely from day-to-day.
Compliance solutions aren't quite there yet, but they're coming. Out of a need, comes a solution. The demand for international compliance solutions has increased tenfold and companies are scrambling to get their products out to market. I've been pitched some amazing compliance solutions in recent weeks that are currently in beta, with public releases coming by the end of the year. A smoother road to international compliance will encourage more merchants to forge the path.

I think that not nearly enough time has passed to accurately judge how many merchants expand internationally due to tariffs. By this time next year, we could be having a very different conversation.

What are your thoughts / predictions on the subject? If you run a brand that exclusively sells in the U.S., have you considered expanding to other markets in recent months? Why or why not? Hit reply and let me know or join the conversation on LinkedIn.

7. Meta is urging a federal judge to dismiss its monopoly suit

Meta is urging a federal judge to reject the FTC's claim that the company violates antitrust laws by monopolizing the “personal social networking services” market, by arguing that such a market does not exist. Good grief Meta! Really?!

The company argues that Facebook, which once was a social network, has evolved into a “diverse global provider of entertaining and informative content that competes with increasingly similar social apps including TikTok, YouTube, iMessage, and others.” It claims that only 7% of time spent on Instagram and 17% of time spent on Facebook involve consuming content from friends, while the rest is spent watching short-form videos and engaging with other non-friend content.

That's because you keep shoving that other content down our throats! The majority of user joined Facebook and Instagram to connect with family and friends, and then you pulled the rug out from under their feet so that you could become a TikTok clone.

And let me ask you this, Facebook: Comparably how much time is spent consuming content from friends on TikTok, YouTube, and those other platforms? 0% or an inconsequential amount? Boom… roasted. You're a social network.

The company's new filing comes in an antitrust lawsuit brought by the FTC in December 2020, when the agency alleged that Meta's acquisition of Instagram ($1B in 2012) and WhatsApp ($19B in 2014) enabled the company to maintain a monopoly and preserve its dominance in the “personal social networking market.”

I'm curious to see what happens with this case. I doubt anything will come of it, as the FTC are the ones who originally approved the acquisitions more than a decade ago, but we will see.

8. Drone delivery is getting closer to your door

The U.S. Transportation Department proposed new rules to allow drones to operate beyond the visual line of sight without individual waivers, in a move aimed at accelerating the advancement of commercial drone delivery by companies like Amazon and Starbucks.

Historically, drone pilots have been required to maintain a “visual line of sight” with their aircraft, meaning they must keep the drone in direct view at all times to avoid obstacles without relying solely on the drone's cameras and sensors, unless the operator sought individual waivers or exemptions, which was a bit of a cumbersome process.

The new rules would remove that visual line of sight requirement, but introduce new safety measures that manufacturers, pilots, and traffic-management services would need to follow, hoping to further adoption while still addressing safety concerns. For example, under the proposal, operations would occur at or below 400 feet above ground and from pre-designated locations approved by the FAA for takeoff and landing. There would also be new requirements for traffic-management services to keep drones safely separated from other drones and airplanes.

Honestly, drone delivery taking over the U.S. delivery market is fairly inevitable, as were regulation changes like this. Hopefully, even with the new rules, the industry will collectively continue to put safety and privacy first. Okay, you're right… How about just safety then?

9. Other e-commerce news of interest

Apple is testing an upgraded version of App Intents that would let Siri fully control apps by voice, performing tasks like editing and sending photo, shopping on Amazon, and writing comments on Instagram. The move is part of Apple's aim to create a truly hands-free iPhone experience and is tied to Apple’s broader Siri overhaul planned for spring. Rollout will initially be limited due to accuracy and security concerns in sensitive apps like banking, but early testing includes major third-party apps such as Uber, Amazon, YouTube, and WhatsApp.

U.S. household debt reached a record high of $18.39 trillion after increasing 0.10%, or around $185B, in Q2 2025, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. For comparison, at the end of 2019, just before COVID hit, the U.S. household debt was roughly $14.15 trillion. Mortgage balances led the rise, growing by $131 billion to $19.94 trillion, followed by auto loan originations climbing $22B to $188B and credit card balances rising by $27B to $1.21 trillion. Before sounding the alarms though, it's important to note that U.S. GDP is also at an all-time high of around $30.51 trillion, which means our household debt-to-GDP ratio is roughly 60%, nearing a 20 year low.

Flexport informed clients that starting December 1, its monthly minimum fee will increase to $5,000, marking a 10x jump from the $500 threshold it introduced just six months ago. Under the new structure, if a merchant's fulfillment fees only totaled $1,500 for that month, they would still be charged the $5,000. The new minimum indicates that Flexport is no longer interested in servicing smaller merchants, and leaves existing smaller merchants with a short runway to find an alternative fulfillment partner, just as they're entering the busy Q3/Q4 seasons.

Last week I reported that Google was indexing ChatGPT conversations that users shared via public links, exposing personal exchanges in the same way that Meta recently took heat for doing as well. Turns out, over 110,000 over those conversations were also saved on Archive.org's Wayback Machine! Exchanges include a lawyer for a multinational energy company asking ChatGPT how to best displace indigenous Amazon communities from their territories in order to build a hydroelectric dam, while another revealed the identity of an Egyptian man writing a story about how their current President “screwed over the Egyptian people” — which could land him in a heap of trouble. At the time of writing, the archived chats still exist because Archive.org says it hasn't received any request from OpenAI to remove them. I mean, they could go ahead and do it anyway…

Microsoft is being sued by a man from California over the company's plans to discontinue support for Windows 10, which is now over a decade old. The plaintiff argues that the end of Windows 10 is part of Microsoft's strategy to force customers to purchase new devices and to “monopolize the generative AI market” since Windows 11 comes preloaded with Microsoft's gen-AI software like Copilot. The lawsuit is seeking a judge to order Microsoft to continue supporting Windows 10 without additional charge until the number of devices using it falls below 10% of total Windows users. The lawsuit raises the question — how long is a company expected to support an operating system or software that has no recurring subscription fee attached to it?

USPS is proposing another “temporary” holiday rate hike from Oct. 5 to Jan. 18, raising prices on Priority Mail, Ground Advantage, and other services by up to $16 depending on weight and zone. The move comes as USPS posted a $3.1B loss in fiscal Q3 2025, bringing YTD losses to $6.2B. Critics argue that the USPS' strategy of frequent rate hikes and service changes are worsening its financial problems and are pushing for the USPS SERVES US Act, which would limit price increases to once per year for certain products.

Walmart Marketplace is offering sellers incentives ahead of the holiday shopping season including no peak-storage fees on all products and zero commission fees on qualifying toy listings in Q4, as well as a 30% discount for first-time users of its Multichannel Solutions through Oct 1st. Walmart said the launches were its way of ~~sticking it to Amazon~~ saying thank you and ensuring sellers “have every advantage heading into the holidays.”

Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan, China's three biggest instant commerce companies, called a truce to their pricing war after China's market regulator expressed concerns over what it was doing to the greater market. In late July, the regulator summoned the three companies and urged them to rein in promotions and engage in “rational” competition, which they've now agreed to. What that actually looks like in practice remains to be seen.

Computer science majors now face a 6.1% unemployment rate, more than double that of recent biology or art history grads, as AI coding tools and tech layoffs reduce entry-level opportunities. The number of undergraduates in the field surged to over 170,000 last year, more than twice the 2014 total, but many graduates are struggling to land jobs, with some applying to thousands of positions and receiving only a handful of interviews. Employers are using AI to both write code and screen resumes, leaving little room for junior entrants and starting salaries that once topped $100K now out of reach for many new grads.

eBay is now inserting a Boost button on sellers' own items when viewed in search results pages to encourage them to either opt the item into Promoted Listings General ads or increase their budget if the item is already being advertised. If using the search bar from the seller's Store page, which only returns their own listings, the Boost button is appearing on all items. It's a pretty good idea in my opinion. The easier eBay can make it to boost items, the more sellers may do it. However it's not like it was a challenge before.

Klarna and Afterpay announced that they won't share loan data with credit bureaus until they know their customers won't be unfairly penalized, noting that the reporting, scoring, and interpretation of BNPL loans by credit bureaus in the U.S. is not very transparent yet. Earlier this year, Affirm became the first major BNPL provider to start sharing all of its consumer data with Experian and TransUnion. Klarna reports its longer-term interest-bearing loans, but not currently its pay-in-4 installment plans that make up most of its business in the U.S. Credit bureaus say they’re ready to incorporate BNPL data soon, but full adoption depends on industry consensus.

Clearpay, the UK subsidiary of Afterpay, introduced a feature called Spend Cap that gives users control to set a personal spending limit as part of its mission to promote responsible spending with BNPL (and keep regulators happy LOL). The feature can be configured in two steps and takes effect immediately. Spend Cap complements its other customization tools including Bundled Payments, which lets users pay early or combine multiple orders, and Payment Rescheduling, which allows customers to delay payments up to three times a year to avoid late fees. Great idea! I support all features that put spending control into customers' hands.

Shein and Temu now hold a combined 3.6% share of South Africa’s total clothing, textile, footwear, and leather market (online and offline), generating $405M in 2024, according to the Localisation Support Fund. Shein entered the market in 2020 and Temu in 2024, rapidly surpassing international rivals like H&M, Zara, and Cotton On, which collectively hold 3.4%. Specifically online, the two Chinese retailers now control 37.1% of South Africa’s e-commerce CTFL market.

TikTok Shop is off to a slow start in Japan, with only 10% of retailers planning to adopt its live commerce feature a month after launch, according to a Tete Marche survey. That's considered slow? What did they expect? Early adopters like Unilever, Lacoste, and Nissin Foods joined in June, but momentum stalled afterwards due to uncertainty over live commerce’s appeal in the country and consumers' hesitancy to enter payment info on a Chinese-owned platform — something that Americans apparently have absolutely no problem with.

Google and Perplexity are battling it out in India for market share, with both companies offering free access to their AI-powered premium search tools for a limited time in an attempt to gain favor with students and consumers to become their preferred AI search tool. India's 700M Internet users and low-cost mobile data make it a great testing ground and training data source for AI firms, so the vultures are circling. The free plans have drawn millions of users, but it is uncertain if they will actually pay for the services when the offers end.

Ikea opened a digital store on JD.com with plans to use its logistics network to deliver to homes, marking the second Chinese e-commerce platform that the company has joined, following its opening of a store on Alibaba's Tmall in March 2020. Ikea launched a 2,999 yuan ($417) gaming chair and a 3,999 ($556) gaming desk specially for JD.com, alongside its 6,500 products that it sells on its own website and in stores.

Amazon is breaking up and reorganizing the operations of its Wondery podcast network, which it acquired in 2020 for $300M to compete with Spotify and Apple. Around 110 people will lose their jobs because of the move, including the company's CEO Jen Sargent. Existing podcast series on Wondery will be moved to Amazon's Audible division or become part of the company's new “creator services” team. Despite signing up some of the biggest names in the business like Dax Shepard, Lebron James, and Will Arnett, Amazon's big push into podcasts hasn't worked out as planned so far, but personally I wouldn't under estimate Amazon in this area.

Remember Linda Yaccarino, former CEO of X who stepped down as Elon Musk's right-hand woman less than a month ago? She has now been named CEO of eMed Population Health, a Miami-based telehealth company that specializes in chronic care management for obesity and type 2 diabetes. Regardless of whether Yaccarino is right or wrong for the job, talk about great PR! The only proven method to get that type of free press is having your CEO cheat on his wife at a Coldplay concert.

xAI has recruited 14 AI researchers and engineers from Meta since January, with several joining as recently as a few weeks ago including key figures from its Fundamental AI Research team and those who worked on scaling its Llama models, according to a Business Insider analysis of LinkedIn profiles. So Meta poaches them from OpenAI and then xAI poaches them from Meta? xAI now employs around 1,200 people, including about 40 former Tesla staff and several from SpaceX.

Cloudflare accused Perplexity of evading websites' no crawl requests by stealthily deploying web crawlers to scrape content from sites, which is something WIRED and Forbes both accused the AI company of doing last year. In response, Perplexity shared in a blog post that Cloudflare's systems are “fundamentally inadequate” for distinguishing between AI assistants and bots (which are kind of the same?), adding, “If you can't tell a helpful digital assistant from a malicious scraper, then you probably shouldn't be making decisions about what constitutes legitimate web traffic.” Alternatively, if there's actually nothing shady going on, instead of going on the defensive, you could help Cloudflare understand the difference.

🏆 This week's most ridiculous story… An AI engineer named Yangshun Tay posted about an OpenAI offer on his LinkedIn and got a near-instant e-mail from Meta congratulating him on the offer and asking if he'd be interested in working for them. Tay actually worked at Meta for over five years before leaving to start his own company, which Meta was aware of. He told Business Insider that he's not going back to Meta because “I don't think they're leading the AI race right now, even though they've made a lot of high-profile hires. I'm just not too bullish on Meta after working there for over five years.” He also noted that several other companies reached out after he posted his OpenAI offer including many smaller AI startups. The moral of the story is — if you want a job, lie on LinkedIn and say that you received an offer from OpenAI and then the real offers will come soon after!

10. Seed rounds, IPOs, & acquisitions

Descartes Systems Group, a Canadian provider of cloud-based logistics and supply chain management solutions, acquired Finale Inventory, a U.S. cloud inventory management platform designed for SMBs, for $40M and a potential post-acquisition earnout of up to $15M. The acquisition complements the company's other e-commerce investments focused on inventory, warehousing, and shipping management including its most recent acquisition of 3GTMS, a global supply chain SaaS provider, for $115M.

FirstMile, ACI Logistix, and Sendle forged a three-way merger and are now operating under the unified leadership of FAST Group, a California-based holding company, backed by funds from Federation Asset Management. The three multi-national logistics carriers will continue to operate under their established brands, all while functioning as an integrated logistics ecosystem. Something tells me we'll be seeing more of these types of mergers on the horizon.

Upwork, a hiring platform that connects companies with freelancers, acquired Bubty, a workforce management platform, and signed a definitive agreement to acquire Ascen, a global compliance and employer-of-record company, for undisclosed amounts. Upwork plans to integrate the two companies into its existing enterprise business, which makes up about $100M of its $750M annual revenue, allowing the company to offer access to talent beyond the independent contractors it's historically served, targeting new areas of the corporate staffing market. Everyone wants to move upstream!

Amazon acquired 90 acres of land in West Melbourne, Florida for $59M, near the intersection of Interstate 95 and U.S. Highway 192 to build a new facility that's currently still in the early stages. The site will use advanced automation to pick, pack, and ship customer orders. The acquisition follows its $200M acquisition of a 630,000 sq.ft. robotics fulfillment center in Daytona Beach.

Marqeta, a U.S. fintech that provides a card issuing and payment processing platform, acquired TransactPay, a European payment services provider that offers BIN sponsorship, card issuing, and payment processing solutions, for an undisclosed amount. The deal will strengthen Marqeta's digital payments capabilities for customers in the U.K. and European Union and allow existing customers to enter European markets more easily.

Alaan, a UAE-based fintech that offers an AI-powered corporate spend management platform for finance teams in MENA, raised $48M in a Series A round led by Peak XV Partners, marking one of the largest Series A rounds for a fintech in the region. Since launching in 2022, the company has processed over 2.5M transactions for more than 1,500 finance teams, all while doing so profitably. CEO Parthi Duraisamy shared that the company spent $5M to generate $10M in revenue.

Kustomer, a New York-based AI customer service and CRM platform that automates support across multiple channels, raised $30M in a Series B round led by Norwest. The company has launched two AI-native products in the past year including AI Agents for Reps, which drafts responses, surfaces relevant data, and reduces manual busywork for human agents, and AI Agents for Customers, which it claims can resolve up to 40% of customer inquiries without human intervention — leaving the other 60% of us screaming “AGENT! REPRESENTATIVE!”

Meta selected Pacific Investment Management and Blue Owl Capital to lead a $29B financing for its data center expansion in rural Louisiana, with the former leading a $26B debt portion and the latter providing $3B of equity. Private equity companies have been aggressively seeking to deploy capital in transactions secured by physical assets like data centers, and Meta took that opportunity to raise funds in a competitive process that pitted some of the largest names in private credit against each other.

Meta acquired WaveForms AI, a startup working on an AI model capable of understanding emotion and mimicking it in audio form, according to The Information sources. The tech won't be publicly released, but instead will exclusively used to help Mark Zuckerberg sound human during interviews and depositions. (LOL, j/k.) WaveForms AI debuted in December and announced a $40M funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company was founded by Alexis Conneau, who worked on audio research at Meta for eight years before leading audio research for OpenAI's GPT-4o, and Caralie Lemaitre, who worked on business strategy for advertising at Google, who will both join Meta Superintelligence Labs.

Salasa, a Saudi Arabian e-commerce fulfillment company that provides warehousing, packaging, and last-mile delivery services, raised $30M in a Series B round led by Artal Capital, bringing its total amount raised to $40M. The startup has fulfilled and shipped over 50M products since its launch in 2017 and now serves more than 1,000 merchants including major brands like Noon, Amazon, and Laverne. The funds will be used to expand its fulfillment centers, dark stores, and bonded zones to meet growing demand across the region.

Lava Payments, a U.S. startup that provides a digital wallet and credit system designed for AI agents to make seamless, autonomous online transactions across multiple merchants and services, raised $5.8M in a seed round led by Lerer Hippeau. The platform aims to remove friction by letting customers load credits once and use them for tasks across different tools and AI models like GPT and Claude without repeated approvals. The funding will go toward hiring, product development, and go-to-market strategies.

Uzum, a Uzbekistan-based e-commerce and fintech company that offers online retail, digital payments, and financial services, raised $65.5M in a round co-led by Tencent and VR Capital at a $1.5B valuation, marking a 30% jump from its $1.16B valuation in March last year. Uzum currently boasts over 17M monthly active users, which is almost half of Uzbekistan's adult population and about two-thirds of all smartphone users in the country. In the first half of 2025, it recorded $250M in GMV, up 1.5x YoY.

Wuilt, an Egyptian website-building and e-commerce platform that serves the MENA region, raised $2M in a round led by Flat6Labs and MTF VC. The company was founded in 2019 and in April 2025, made a strategic move to offer its core platform free of charge in Egypt, removing subscription fees from its model. The move led to over 20,000 merchants joining the platform, which is financially supported by add-on services like Wuilt Shipments, Wuilt Pay, and Wuilt Wallet.

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Paul E. Drecksler
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