#257 – The Great TikTok Heist, PayPal Bank, & Temu launches a Shopify App

by Paul Drecksler | Dec 22, 2025 | Recent Newsletters

Hi Shopifreaks

Happy Hanukkah! Merry Christmas! And soon to be Happy Kwanzaa! I hope that you've been enjoying the holiday season so far and continue to in the coming week. It's honestly hard to believe that 2025 is nine days away from being over. It flew by, but at the same time felt like a decade! LOL

One quick note: Next week I'm publishing my 4th annual 2026 E-commerce Predictions report. Thank you to everyone who have already submitted their predictions. If you'd still like to submit yours, simply hit reply to this e-mail and send them my way before Wednesday.

Ready for a HUGE holiday edition of Shopifreaks?

In this week's edition I cover:

The TikTok deal is moving forward
Temu launches a Shopify App
PayPal wants to be a bank
Facebook tests new link posting limits
Big lawsuits for Apple, Amazon, Adobe, and other tech giants
Alexa+ is coming to desktop
OpenAI launches its app store
Senators introduce the BNPL Protection Act
Mattel holds off on AI-infused products
Rakuten wants more foreign sellers
Andreessen Horowitz is backing a phone farm

All this and more in this week's 257th Edition of Shopifreaks. Thanks for subscribing and sharing!

Stat of the Week

The 4 biggest U.S. banks — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citi — control nearly 45% of all U.S. bank deposits, while the top 10 banks collectively hold a 65% share. The other roughly 4,369 FDIC-insured banks and savings institutions hold the remaining 35% between them.

1. The TikTok deal is actually happening

Welp, I called this one wrong. I definitely didn't think this deal was going to happen, or that there was even an actual deal in the works. However it's been widely reported that TikTok signed the deal to spin off its U.S. assets to create a new entity with a group of mostly American investors, as confirmed by CEO Shou Chew in a memo to employees on Thursday.

Here's what we know about the TikTok deal:

Under the agreement, the U.S. TikTok app will be controlled by a new joint venture.
45% will be owned by Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX.
5% will be owned by an unnamed group of new investors. Sounds suspicious…
30.1% of the joint venture will be held by “affiliates of certain existing investors in ByteDance.”
19.9% will be retained by ByteDance.
The U.S. venture will have a seven-member majority-American board of directors.
The parties are moving to close the deal by January 22, 2026.
The new entity will retrain TikTok’s algorithm on U.S. user data.
Oracle will oversee storage of Americans’ data.
TikTok Global will continue to manage e-commerce, advertising, and marketing on the new U.S. platform.
Advertisers will be able to continue to connect with global audiences with no impact.
U.S. officials have indicated that China has approved the transfer agreement. However, there has been no official public confirmation from Beijing itself, with the Chinese Foreign Ministry only stating its position remains consistent and clear.

Is the deal good or bad? And for who?

Many TikTok Creators and journalists have expressed concerns about the future of the app, particularly in regards to censorship and open expression.

K-pop Demon Hunters” star Rei Ami told Variety:

“I would be afraid of the censorship. I hope TikTok remains firm in its pledge not to censor their creators. Censorship goes against what America’s founding principles are. Censorship remaining out of users’ creative ability is what I hope and want for TikTok’s future.”

Karl Bode of TechDirt wrote:

“It wasn’t subtle that the goal was always for Trump’s buddies to just basically steal a big ownership chunk of a Chinese short form video company that U.S. tech companies couldn’t out innovate. Offloading the company to his friends at Oracle and Walmart was Trump’s stated goal during the first administration, only thwarted because he lost the 2020 election. Everything else was decorative.”

He went on to say:

“This was never about addressing privacy, propaganda, or national security. It was always about the U.S. stealing ownership of one of the most popular and successful short form video apps in history because companies like Facebook were too innovatively incompetent to dethrone them in the open market. Ultimately this bipartisan accomplishment not only makes everything worse, it demonstrates we’re absolutely no better than the countries we criticize.”

SCMP published an editorial piece that said:

“If all else works out, the agreement shows negotiation and mutual respect, rather than belligerence, between the rival powers are the only ways to move forward.”

As for what I think about the deal…

I'm still deciding. Let's see if it closes first. My biggest questions at the moment are:

Who are the unnamed investors that will own a 5% stake in the new TikTok U.S. joint venture?
Is Donald Trump one of them?
Are they American?
Why are they unnamed?
Why isn't there full transparency about this?

Most importantly, how do you feel about the TikTok deal? Hit reply and let me know.

2. Temu launches an official Shopify App

Temu launched an official Shopify app enabling merchants to list and manage products on their marketplaces directly from their Shopify admins. The app is now available on the Shopify App Store and gives merchants direct access to Temu's Local Seller Program in more than 30 markets where the program operates, including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, Spain, and Australia.

Here's what the app can offers:

One-click product sync to create new listings quickly
Ability to list across more than 600 product categories
Real-time inventory updates to prevent overselling
Automated order and shipping coordination

A Temu spokesperson said:

“Shopify merchants can now easily reach new customers on our global platform This app is part of our efforts to lower barriers and create growth opportunities for businesses worldwide while giving shoppers greater convenience and choice.”

So far the app is not off to a great start.

It's got one review on its Shopify App Store listing that reads:

“Unfortunately, this is one of the worst Shopify apps I have ever used. The interface is not intuitive at all, and almost every step comes with problems. The overall feature set is very limited and does not meet the requirements of a professional sales channel integration. Product synchronization is highly unreliable. Products do not sync correctly, images are often missing or assigned incorrectly, and meta data is not mapped properly. This makes it extremely time-consuming to maintain listings and leads to constant errors. The documentation is very poor and does not explain critical workflows or common issues. When problems occur, there is little to no helpful support available, which makes resolving issues frustrating and inefficient. Overall, this app is not ready for serious use. I cannot recommend it in any way. One of the most disappointing Shopify apps I have worked with.”

I'm curious how much this will tip the needle (if at all) in regards to encouraging Shopify merchants to list their goods on Temu.

It wasn't exactly difficult before to open a seller account on Temu, and multiple solutions for syncing products, inventory, and pricing with Temu already exist on the market. I'm not sure if a direct integration with Shopify was the thing holding sellers back from listing their products on Temu. Then again, it certainly can't hurt — although the person who left the 1-star review may disagree.

3. PayPal applies to the FDIC to form its own bank

PayPal applied for approval to form PayPal Bank, which would enable the company to provide business lending solutions to small businesses in the U.S. without relying on third parties, offer interest-bearing savings accounts to customers with FDIC coverage, and seek direct membership with card networks to complement its processing and settlement activities.

The company has submitted applications to the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to establish PayPal Bank, a proposed Utah-chartered industrial loan company.

PayPal CEO Alex Chriss said:

“Securing capital remains a significant hurdle for small businesses striving to grow and scale. Establishing PayPal Bank will strengthen our business and improve our efficiency, enabling us to better support small business growth and economic opportunities across the U.S.”

Mara McNeill has been selected to serve as PayPal Bank's President, coming to the table with over 25 years of financial services experience in banking, commercial lending, and private equity, most recently serving as President and CEO of Toyota Financial Savings Bank, and earlier in her career, worked as general counsel in auto finance for JPMorgan Chase.

Everyone wants to be a bank.

Klarna and Sezzle are reportedly also interested in securing a bank charter. Last week, five cryptocurrency platforms including Ripple and Circle received preliminary approval to establish national trust banks, though they won’t be able to take deposits, offer checking or savings accounts, or provide FDIC insurance. And then of course there's Walmart, which has pursued banking ambitions for years through multiple efforts, partnerships, and regulatory applications.

It's not been easy to become a bank, until recently.

What changed is the regulatory environment surrounding nontraditional bank charters. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has begun approving national trust bank charters for crypto and payments firms, allowing them to operate under federal banking supervision without taking insured deposits or offering checking and savings accounts.

At the same time, the FDIC has revived support for industrial loan company charters, which let commercial and payments firms offer lending and certain banking services while avoiding Federal Reserve oversight under the Bank Holding Company Act, lowering the barrier for fintechs and large brands to pursue bank-like status.

Does the U.S. need more banks?

There are around 4,379 FDIC-insured banks and savings institutions in the U.S. today, down sharply from more than 14,000 in the mid-1980s after decades of consolidation. The industry has long been dominated by the same large incumbents, with only a handful of new banks chartered each year until a recent small uptick began in the early 2020s.

As you saw earlier in my Stat of the Week, iIt's estimated that the top four U.S. banks, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citi, hold roughly 45% of all U.S. bank deposits, and the top 10 banks hold a 65% share.

In my opinion, the space is ripe for competition and innovation, which can only come from dishing out more banking charters. The banking industry is overdue for a competitive correction.

Of course, there are risks with allowing fintech, payments, and crypto firms into the regulated banking — but they're risks I'm willing to take to knock Wells Fargo off its pedestal.

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

4. Facebook tests link posting limits for professional accounts

The enshittification of the Internet is exhausting. Meta is currently testing imposing a limit on the number of links professional users can post on Facebook, unless they have a paid Meta Verified subscription.

Meta told TechCrunch that it is trying to learn how it can add more value to Meta Verified subscribers, and this test is one such experiment to enhance that paid plan.

How is taking something away that was free for all users and subscription-gating it “adding value” to paid subscribers?

Adding Value = Creating NEW Features For Paid Subscribers
Adding Value ≠ Putting a Paywall On Existing Free Features
That's called a “transfer of wealth.”

Meta, maybe the people who follow the page you've restricted get value from the links they share? You could always, I don't know, give your users control over what they see in their feeds?

It all comes down to Meta wanting to keep people engaging with content on their own platforms, not with the Internet at large, in order to earn more ad revenue.

TechCrunch reports that in its transparency report for Q3, Meta said that more than 98% views on the feed in the U.S. come from posts that don’t have any links. That is by design. It was not always that way on Facebook.

The company has spent the past two decades suppressing the reach of posts that include external links — a well known fact by publishers — as to train its users not to include them if they want their posts to perform. LinkedIn and X do the same.

A long, long time ago, social media was created for its users. Maybe I'm naive, but I do believe that at one point, there was a true mission by some to connect the world and give everyone a voice. Now social media is built for advertisers, shareholders, and the control of information.

The profit is never enough. They’ll squeeze every cent out of every user while simultaneously building a technological moat that makes it nearly impossible for new entrants to compete without billions in backing. The only company to successfully compete (that didn't get acquired by Meta) just got heisted by U.S. Big Tech with the help of the government.

5. Lawsuits, lawsuits, lawsuits! Nine big ones this week…

There was so much news about lawsuits this week, I decided to give it a dedicated section! Let's see who's getting sued, who made it out of the hotseat, and who settled.

Instacart agreed to pay $60M in refunds to settle FTC allegations that the company failed to disclose mandatory service fees and hid refund options from users. For example, the FTC demonstrated that Instacart falsely offered “free delivery” to customers on their first order, but still required them to pay a mandatory service fee to get their groceries delivered. Basically they just gave the “delivery fee” a different name. Instacart denied any wrongdoing, claiming that it uses “straightforward marketing, transparent pricing and fees, clear terms, easy cancellation and generous refund policies,” but confirmed the settlement.
Apple and Amazon are facing a new UK class action seeking over £900M for over 10M buyers of Apple products for allegedly colluding to restrict independent sellers and inflate prices. The lawsuit alleges that a 2018 agreement led Amazon to block most third-party sellers from offering Apple products while granting Amazon favorable wholesale terms, effectively pushing independent resellers off the marketplace by early 2019 and leaving shoppers with fewer discounts and higher prices. The two companies had a similar case dismissed in the U.S. a few months ago. Doesn't Amazon have a right to say “no resellers” for any brand? And doesn't Apple have a right to implement a Minimum Advertised Price policy for any of its resellers that would effectively standardize pricing for its products across Amazon anyway? It's a fine line I guess between “collusion” and “independently agreeing to implement policies at the same time.”
Adobe is facing a class action lawsuit spearheaded by an Oregon author who claims that the company used pirated versions of books to train its SlimLM program, which is a small LLM that can work on mobile devices. The lawsuit claims Adobe’s SlimLM model was trained on the SlimPajama dataset, which plaintiffs say is derived from RedPajama and includes the Books3 collection, a dataset of roughly 191,000 books that has been criticized for containing copyrighted material. At some point, every company with an LLM that hasn't been sued yet should just come forward and preemptively settle with book authors, because they all did it!
Zappos is facing a class-action lawsuit accusing it of secretly sharing shoppers' data with Meta without consent, despite promising to keep their information confidential. The plaintiffs argue that Zappos violated federal and California privacy laws by permitting Meta's pixel to intercept customers' electronic communications without their knowledge or consent, even though the company explicitly told customers that their personal information would not be used or shared for interest-based advertising, and claim that Meta received customers’ names, email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, location data and purchase details during these interactions. A California federal judge recently denied a motion from Adidas to dismiss a similar class-action lawsuit, so she's got a chance!
Speaking of Meta… The company agreed to a $50M settlement to resolve allegations that it deceived millions of users about privacy controls and allowed third-party apps to improperly access personal information for years. The settlement stems all the way back to the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2013, which affected around 7M Facebook users in California. Meta did not admit to any wrongdoing, but agreed to pay the $50M in civil penalties and implement reforms on how it oversees third-party applications for the next three years. Ouch! I'm sure Meta was hurting over that rounding error.
Remember last week when I reported that a startup calling itself “Operation Bluebird” filed a formal petition with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office to cancel X's trademarks of the words “Twitter” and “tweet” due to the company abandoning the Twitter brand and no longer using the terms? Well now X is countersuing Operation Bluebird for copyright infringement for “brazenly attempting to steal the world-famous TWITTER brand,” claiming that it never gave up the Twitter name and logo, despite the rebrand. X defends its trademark over the fact that millions of people still access the X platform through the Twitter.com domain and use the terms “Twitter” and “Tweet” when referring to the platform and its posts. I'd say that this lawsuit feels like Elon Musk using his wealth and ample legal teams to bully and intimidate the operation, but Operation Bluebird already started using the Twitter trademarks in their marketing! They kind of had this countersuit coming to them.
noyb, a European privacy advocacy group that focuses on enforcing data protection laws, filed two complaints with the Austrian data protection authority against TikTok, AppsFlyer, and Grindr for unlawfully tracking user data across third-party apps. The group alleges that TikTok utilized AppsFlyer to access sensitive information, including a user's sexual orientation inferred from Grindr usage, without valid consent under GDPR, and that TikTok failed to provide complete data in response to access requests and utilized a “download tool” that withheld relevant personal information. Does TikTok really need Grindr to determine a user's sexual orientation? I figured that'd be obvious after about the fourth or fifth video swipe.
A U.S. federal judge dismissed a lawsuit accusing Google and TikTok of negligently hosting harmful videos, ruling the claims were barred by Section 230 and product liability laws. The plaintiffs argued the platforms ignored reports of harmful content, but the court found the case amounted to a disagreement over content moderation decisions rather than result of the social media companies offering a “defective” product. The dismissal was issued with prejudice, preventing the plaintiffs from refiling unless an appeals court intervenes.
Last but not least… Google is suing SerpAPI, a data extraction service that provides structured results from Google and other search engines via APIs, for allegedly using hundreds of millions of fake search requests to scrape Google search results, bypass security protections, and resell copyrighted content at scale. Google claims the scraping targeted licensed and content-rich results such as Knowledge Panels, Maps, and Shopping listings, and is seeking monetary damages and an injunction to stop the activity. The lawsuit follows similar allegations brought by Reddit earlier this year against SerpApi and other scrapers over unauthorized data use tied to AI training.

6. Alexa+ comes to your desktop browser via Alexa.com

Amazon is bringing Alexa+ to your desktop browser to further compete with ChatGPT, Gemini and other web-based AI chatbots. The paid AI assistant was previously only available on mobile, and is now initially available on Alexa.com to a subset of users in the Alexa+ early access program, with access likely to expand in the coming weeks.

The new web portal allows users to start new chats, access and continue past Alexa chats, including ones started on other devices, and seamlessly switch back and forth between voice conversations and text chats across devices.

Todd Bishop of GeekWire wrote:

“I’ve been trying it out, and I’m already finding it quite useful as an extension of the Alexa experience. In addition to expanding the chat functionality to the browser, the web interface offers fine-grained control over reminders, calendar appointments, uploaded files, and smart home devices. For example, I was able to edit a family reminder: changing the assigned person, adjusting the date and time, setting it to repeat weekly, and adding a flag for Alexa to follow up until it’s complete. All of this happened through simple clicks, much easier than talking Alexa through the details, in my experience.”

He goes on to talk about how Alexa's smart home integration gives users the ability to control lights and plugs, view Ring cameras, and perform other home tasks with more accuracy than with voice commands or mobile inputs.

There's a running joke on TikTok about how Millennials pull out our laptops to make big purchases or perform more important tasks online — which in my experience, is spot on! Anything that involves excessive typing, opening multiple tabs, or deep research is easier on a laptop. I fit this Millennial stereotype 100%.

Will Alexa.com successfully compete with ChatGPT and Gemini?

No, likely not for online research, content creation, coding assistance, and other tasks that we've come to rely on those chatbots for — but who cares? Amazon has a few things that those companies don't:

Hardware devices that are always listening across our homes and TVs.
Integration with a smart home ecosystem including cameras, doorbells, alarms, and lights.
Access to the Amazon marketplace where many consumers do over 60% of their online shopping.
The ability to autonomously purchase items from Amazon on your behalf, backed by Amazon's customer-centric return and protection policies.
And of course a logistics network that can get a product to your door within hours of ordering it!

These unique advantages mean Amazon doesn't have to worry about competing with OpenAI and Google at every category of AI. Amazon can simply be the best at the one area ChatGPT desperately needs for monetization — shopping. Amazon doesn't care if you continue using ChatGPT for generating silly images and getting the wrong answers to your questions, as long as you go back to Alexa when it's time to shop.

OpenAI's business model is three years old but already decades behind. The company is attempting to be everything to everyone — aiming to serve the needs of consumers, enterprises, and developers alike — but the AI habits of users have changed in recent times. We no longer rely on ONE single AI platform to serve all of our needs. I regularly switch between platforms throughout my day.

Amazon is winning as the AI home operating system and is the only platform that can deliver a true closed-loop shopping experience.
Google dominates real-time search and research and has a major advantage in business-task AI because its models are embedded directly into the productivity tools we already use every day.
Anthropic outperforms everyone else at coding and is emerging as the go-to option for enterprise AI workloads.
Grok is where you turn when safety guardrails limit what you can do on other AI platforms.
As for Meta, I have absolutely zero unique use cases for Meta AI. Creating AI video slop, maybe?

Bringing Alexa+ to desktop browsers is a step forward in Amazon cementing its role as the de facto home operating system and AI shopping portal, meeting users everywhere they are, including meeting us old Millennials on our laptops.

7. OpenAI launches an app store within ChatGPT

Speaking of OpenAI attempting to be everywhere….

OpenAI introduced an app directory inside of ChatGPT, enabling users to connect to platforms like Booking.com, Spotify, Dropbox, and Adobe directly within the ChatGPT interface. The app section is currently divided into three categories — Feature, Lifestyle and Productivity — and apps can be used in ChatGPT by simply mentioning them.

The company wrote:

“Apps extend ChatGPT conversations by bringing in new context and letting users take actions like order groceries, turn an outline into a slide deck, or search for an apartment.”

Earlier this year at its DevDay, OpenAI introduced apps in ChatGPT, but up until now the program was in beta with select companies like Zillow. Now the program is open to all developers to submit apps for review and publication.

Here's how it works:

Developers use OpenAI's Apps SDK to build chat-native experiences that bring context and action directly into ChatGPT.
Once ready, they can submit their apps for review and track approval status in the OpenAI Developer Platform.
The first set of approved apps will begin rolling out in the new year.
Apps that meet OpenAI's quality and safety standards are eligible to be published in their new app directory and potentially recommended by ChatGPT during conversations.
Currently developers can only monetize apps by linking out from the ChatGPT app to the native app or website, but the company says it is exploring internal monetization options as well.

The new app store can be accessed by visiting chatgpt.com/apps or by clicking the Apps button in the left sidebar on mobile apps.

This app store is OpenAI's best play of 2025.

We've seen the success that app stores have brought to companies like Google, Apple, and Shopify, and being a first mover with an app marketplace in the AI space could prove to be a very lucrative move for the company.

Will it be enough though?

I'm convinced that OpenAI's business strategy is to be too big to fail — creating an environment where its codependency with private equity, chip makers, the government, and institutional & developer partners make it first in line for a bailout once its unsustainable spending inevitably catches up with it.

Either way, great move with the app store!

8. U.S. Senators introduce the Buy Now, Pay Later Protection Act

U.S. Senators from New York, Rhode Island, Maryland, and Connecticut introduced legislation to extend Truth in Lending Act protections to pay-in-installment loans so that BNPL loans carry the same core protections as credit cards.

The Buy Now, Pay Later Protection Act seeks to mandate standardized periodic statements, clear dispute and refund rights, and the disclosure of all fees upfront to prevent predatory practices.

N.Y. Senator Gillibrand said:

“As prices continue to skyrocket, Buy Now, Pay Later options can be a helpful tool for families, especially during the holiday season. But as these loans have become more popular, we’ve seen predatory companies exploit a lack of regulation by charging hidden fees and trapping families into paying more than they bargained for. Our legislation will protect consumers, establish clear rules of the road, shine a light on the true cost of these products, and strengthen the rights of New Yorkers and families across the country.”

The push follows several years of failed or incomplete efforts to bring BNPL under existing credit regulation.

In 2024, the CFPB attempted to classify BNPL products as credit cards under the Truth in Lending Act, which would have imposed disclosure, billing, and dispute protections without new legislation, but that effort was quickly challenged by industry groups, tied up in court, and effectively sidelined after the current administration moved to scale back the agency’s regulatory reach.

As far back as 2022, the FTC moved to scrutinize BNPL through enforcement and research rather than direct regulation, issuing warnings to BNPL providers about deceptive marketing, hidden fees, and dark patterns. The FTC also opened inquiries into data usage, repayment practices, and whether BNPL firms were improperly profiting from consumer data. However like the CFPB push, those efforts did not result in a comprehensive regulatory framework.

This proposed Buy Now, Pay Later Protection Act could change that by establishing BNPL rules directly through Congress, rather than relying on agency interpretation or enforcement

9. Other e-commerce news of interest

Mattel postponed the launch of its OpenAI-integrated toys, originally planned for 2025, amid rising scrutiny and safety concerns around AI use by children. When the partnership was first announced in June, Mattel didn’t clarify whether the “AI-enabled toys” would come in the form of physical products, like a Barbie that helps you code websites, or a digital experience delivered through apps and websites. However now it doesn't matter because the project has stalled. The only details that the company provided about the decision is that it plans to pivot future AI products toward older audiences and families to align with OpenAI's age restrictions.

Rakuten Group is pushing to recruit more overseas merchants to its Rakuten Ichiba marketplace as part of its strategy to keep users from shopping on rival platforms with lower prices like Temu and Shein. The company first began allowing foreign sellers on its marketplace in 2015, starting with the U.S. and South Korea, and eventually expanding to 22 markets including China and European countries. Foreign sellers currently make up fewer than 2,000 of Ichiba's roughly 55,000 merchants, but the company plans on adding up to 600 new overseas sellers per year by offering dedicated consultants, expanded training programs, and curated merchandising support. Rakuten is also rolling out AI-powered recommendations and private-label products as it tries to defend user engagement against competitors that are gaining traction in Japan. Shein entered the Japanese market in 2020, followed by Temu in 2023.

DoorDash launched a grocery shopping app inside ChatGPT, letting users turn recipe prompts into shoppable grocery carts and check out through DoorDash from local stores, with delivery offered in under an hour with some partner grocers. The integration allows customers to discover meals, auto-generate ingredient lists, and complete purchases without leaving the chat, starting with grocery partners like Kroger, Safeway, Wegmans, and other regional chains. Last week I reported that Instacart launched a similar shopping experience, and given how OpenAI opened its app store to all developers (as reported earlier in this edition), I'd imagine we'll see more grocery integrations coming soon.

Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology is expanding beyond full cashierless stores, with lower-cost deployments, new entry models, and broader adoption across stadiums, airports, hospitals, campuses, EV charging stations, and workplaces. AWS says it has cut deployment costs by roughly 50% over the past three years by shifting to camera “lanes” instead of full-store setups, enabling implementation of the tech in tighter spaces and making the system viable in more environments. Just Walk Out now supports real-time inventory data and loyalty program integrations, with AWS reporting more than 300 live locations globally and more on the way in 2026.

Kim Kardashian hosted her first-ever live shopping event on TikTok for her loungewear brand, Skims, in a livestream that drew roughly 30,000 viewers at its peak. Bloomberg's Alexandra Levine wrote that the livestream felt “like a crossover between an infomercial and a daytime talk show,” featuring celebrity guests and a sexy Santa that urged viewers to keep buying. The event was part of TikTok's push to normalize live commerce in the U.S., borrowing from its model in China that has already driven hundreds of billions in sales on its Chinese app Douyin. TikTok is betting that live shopping can become a second major revenue stream in the U.S. in the future, even though popularity in the country still lags behind China's adoption.

Walmart opened applications for its Pre-Owned program to all Marketplace sellers in good standing, allowing them to apply to sell used, open-box, and refurbished items on Walmart.com without an invitation. Approved listings can include electronics and accessories, must offer extended return windows, and must be priced below the new version of the product. Walmart now offers two resale programs, Pre-Owned and Resold, the latter which is invite-only and designed for sellers who specialize in professionally refurbished products with stricter inspection, testing, and compliance rules. Resold launched in late 2024, and Pre-Owned opened for all sellers to apply on December 15, 2025.

Shopify rolled out a redesigned disputes evidence form that makes it faster and easier for merchants to respond to chargebacks and improve their odds of winning. The updated flow includes a reorganized layout that prioritizes key fields, shows merchants the exact PDF sent to banks, and optionally uses AI to strengthen cases by combining merchant-submitted evidence with relevant Shopify data. Merchants can also submit responses earlier than the deadline, reducing last-minute work while improving the quality and consistency of dispute submissions. Great update Shopify, as this process was in desperate need of a revamp!

OpenAI released its new flagship image generation model, GPT Image 1.5, replacing DALL·E with a model that it says has better ability to follow instructions, can edit photos in a specific way, and generates images up to four times faster. Nice, because just last week I wrote that creating images in ChatGPT was slower than molasses going uphill in January! OpenAI says that its new model “adheres to your intent more reliably—down to the small details—changing only what you ask for while keeping elements like lighting, composition, and people’s appearance consistent across inputs, outputs, and subsequent edits.” The feature is available to Plus, Team, and Enterprise users, with OpenAI positioning it as a core creative tool for enterprise-level businesses rather than a standalone image generator.

Slope, a lending platform backed by Sam Altman and JPMorgan Chase that uses AI to vet businesses, is launching a partnership with Amazon that will allow independent sellers on its platform to apply for reusable lines of credit directly through their Amazon Seller accounts with real-time approvals based on Amazon seller performance data. The program offers credit lines starting at 8.99% APR and targets sellers doing at least $100k in annual revenue. Once approved, sellers can tap the credit line on demand and select repayment terms from three to twelve months to match their inventory and cash-flow cycles.

BigCommerce is the latest e-commerce platform to integrate Stripe's new Agentic Commerce Suite, enabling merchants to connect their product catalogs to various AI agents for discovery and checkout without needing to build custom LLM integrations. BigCommerce merchants remain the merchant of record, keep control over pricing, inventory, and customer relationships, and continue to use their existing order and operations workflows, while Stripe provides security tools, including Shared Payment Tokens and Stripe Radar to protect against fraud risks unique to non-human traffic.

Wix partnered with Stripe to integrate local payment methods across 11 European countries, marking their first joint expansion outside North America. The collaboration enabled merchants in markets including Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom to accept regional options such as Klarna, iDEAL, and Clearpay directly through the Wix dashboard. The companies announced future plans to extend Stripe-powered Wix Payments into the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific regions.

Amazon Prime Air is advocating for a new FAA rule that requires all aircraft flying below 500 feet be electronically visible to ensure safety. The company urged the agency to mandate advanced detect-and-avoid capabilities rather than relying solely on Unmanned Traffic Management systems for every scenario, as well as require that all package delivery drone operators fall under the stricter “certificated” regulatory framework rather than the lighter “permitted” category. The company wrote, “Just as cars need headlights to operate safely at night, aircraft need to be electronically visible to ensure mutual awareness in shared airspace. This basic safety principle should apply equally to everyone who flies in this airspace, creating a safer environment for everyone.”

Apple updated its developer license agreement to allow the company to recoup unpaid commissions and fees by deducting them from in-app purchases processed on a developer's behalf. The change primarily affects developers using external payment systems in regions where local laws permit them, such as the U.S., Japan, and the EU, giving Apple broad discretion to recoup what it believes is owed, potentially at any time. Notably, the updated agreement does not specify how Apple will determine whether it’s owed money. The revised terms also allow Apple to collect unpaid amounts from related affiliates, parent companies, or other apps tied to the same developer account. Nobody's taking a bite out of this Apple!

Mastercard and LoanPro, a fintech that provides loan servicing, collections, and credit management infrastructure for lenders, launched Loan on Card to provide consumers and small businesses with access to BNPL loans that can be used anywhere Mastercard is accepted, delivered via virtual and physical cards. The service utilizes Mastercard Installments Credential to deposit funds into mobile wallets for instant use at any merchant accepting Mastercard. The program, which is scheduled for a 2026 rollout, aims to help credit card issuers compete with BNPL providers like Klarna, which reported that interest-bearing loans drove over 244% of its U.S. GMV growth in Q3 2025.

The Honest Company, the eco-conscious baby, beauty, and household brand founded by Jessica Alba, is halting product sales through its website on Dec 28th and shuttering its mobile app to instead exclusively focus on selling its products through Walmart, Target, Amazon, Kroger, HEB, and other retailers and marketplaces. Turns out D2C is hard! Moving forward, its brand site will serve as a hub for shoppers to locate retailers where its merchandise is sold and offer product advice and inspiration. In its latest earnings, the company reported a 6.7% YoY revenue decline to $93M, while net income rose by 3.6% to $758,000. In regards to shuttering its D2C operations, I completely understand the move and have done it myself with brands in the past. I imagine we'll read more stories like this in the coming years.

In corporate shakeups this week… Poshmark named luxury fashion veteran Elizabeth von der Goltz as its first Chief Revenue Officer to oversee marketing, merchandising, and commercial strategy starting next month. Amazon appointed Peter DeSantis, who currently holds the position of AWS Senior VP, to lead a new division overseeing AI models, chips, and quantum computing. This leadership change coincided with the departure of Rohit Prasad, the current head of AGI, who previously led the Alexa team. OpenAI hired former U.K. Treasury chief George Osborne as Head of OpenAI for Countries to guide governments on integrating AI into economic strategies and public services, while their Chief Communications Officer Hannah Wong announced she will depart in January after five years with the company. Last but not least, OpenAI hired Glen Coats, who previously served as VP and head of core product at Shopify, to head its app platform, and Albert Lee, a longtime Google executive, as VP of Corporate Development.

In layoff and restructuring news… Amazon is preparing to let go of 370 workers at its European headquarters in Luxembourg in the coming weeks, or around 8.5% of its workforce. It originally planned to reduce its headcount by 470, but companies are required under EU law to negotiate layoffs with employee reps and governments. Farther West, Amazon laid off 84 employees across Seattle and Bellevue. The Trade Desk cut around three dozen jobs across its sales and client services divisions, accounting for less than 1% of its workforce, following a year of its stock sliding more than 72% since hitting an all-time high last December. Meanwhile at TikTok, e-commerce product and design lead Zhou Sheng stepped aside, with regional product and growth leaders now reporting to ByteDance executive Chen Songlin, while the data science organization was centralized under Zhang Heng to align AI and measurement strategies.

People with depression, anxiety, and PTSD are twice as likely to use BNPL to pay for purchases, according to a John Hopkins University study that linked poor mental health with the use of installment loans. The study expands on earlier research showing that declining mental health can weaken financial judgment and increase impulsive purchasing behavior. The research was collected during March and April 2024 and included a sample of 2,100 U.S. adults. Researchers note that the study “underscores the need for greater clarity for users on the terms of BNPL and the potential repercussions of missed payments, which could worsen financial standing.”

Salesforce executives say customer trust in large language models has fallen over the past year due to their unpredictability, prompting the company to rely more on deterministic automation inside its Agentforce AI product. This means it makes decisions based on predefined instructions as opposed to reasoning and interpretation — so like, “not AI.” Salesforce says predefined, rule-based workflows improve reliability, reduce hallucinations, and lower operating costs compared to LLM-heavy agents, which customers have complained are too pricey and can't consistently follow instructions. I could've told them that a year ago…

Coupang suffered a massive data breach exposing personal details of 34M South Korean users, representing over 90% of the country's working-age population. The leak went undetected for nearly five months, and Coupang only became aware of the issue after a customer flagged suspicious activity. The alleged perpetrator, who is believed to have once worked for the company as a software developer, had access to nearly every South Korean's personal information including their name, phone numbers, and even the keycode to enter residential buildings. The episode at Coupang led its CEO Park Dae-jun to resign in shame last week. Whereas in America, he would have gotten a bonus.

Doublespeed, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup that runs a massive phone farm used to astroturf TikTok with advertisements for products, suffered a security breach that exposed its entire operation. The breach revealed over 1,000 smartphones powering AI influencers on over 400 TikTok accounts, many of which were actively posting undisclosed ads for learning apps, supplements, massage products, and dating apps in violation of TikTok rules and FTC guidelines. The attacker claimed to still have access to the backend systems, which allowed control over the smartphones and visibility into the proxies used to evade platform authenticity policies. One one hand, we all knew stuff like this was happening on TikTok and other platforms. On the other hand, it's wild to see operations like this backed by credible private equity companies.

PDD Holdings Inc, the parent company of Temu, fired its government relations team in Shanghai after they got into a fistfight with Chinese regulators during an investigation into reports of fraudulent deliveries. Bloomberg reported that “dozens of employees” were dismissed, which means this was more of an Anchorman-style brawl than it was a simple fistfight. Are they sure they want to fire the team that was willing to literally fight for the company? That's about as ride or die of an employee as you could ask for!

🏆 This week's most ridiculous story… A video livestream of YouTuber Matt Farley, who goes by the name @realmattmoney, mysteriously appeared on the White House website on the live news section shortly before midnight on Thursday for about an hour. Farley, who works as a petroleum engineer in Texas said, “It's definitely me, but no idea how I got there. Had I known I would be on the White House page I would probably have dressed a little differently.” It's currently not clear if the episode was the result of a hack or an accidental post, but neither would surprise me given that this is the same administration to to send secret war plans in group chats with journalists in them.

10. Seed rounds, IPOs, & acquisitions

Lightspeed Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley venture firm known for its early investments in Snap, Affirm, Stripe, Faire, Anthropic, and other tech companies, raised more than $9B in funding, its largest ever haul, to invest in AI companies. The fresh funds will be spread across six funds, with $3.3B dedicated to increasing its investment in Anthropic, xAI, and Mistral. Lightspeed said it realized that AI would upend its business after OpenAI debuted ChatGPT in 20022 and subsequently issued a firm-wide directive for everyone to focus on AI.

OpenAI is in talks to raise up to $100B at up to an $830B valuation, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited anonymous sources. The company is aiming to raise the funding by the end of Q1 2026 and is considering asking sovereign wealth funds to invest in the round. OpenAI was most recently valued at $500B in a secondary transaction. The Information reports that Amazon is in talks to invest $10B or more in OpenAI to help fund its massive cloud commitments, including its recently announced plans to spend $38B renting servers from AWS over the next seven years.

Speaking of OpenAI… remember when SoftBank approved a second installment of $22.5B earlier this year as part of its $30B commitment to OpenAI? Reuters reports that the Japanese conglomerate is now racing to fulfill its funding commitment by the end of the year by selling its stakes in Nvidia, T-Mobile, and Didi Global, as well as potentially drawing on unused margin loans secured by its Arm Holdings shares. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has slowed most other dealmaking at SoftBank's Vision Fund to a crawl, requiring that any deal above $50M now requires his explicit approval. SoftBank secured a deal to invest in OpenAI at a $300B valuation in April, which means its capital will effectively triple in value as soon as the check is written, at least on paper, given that the company is currently seeking to raise additional funds at an $830B valuation. If I were SoftBank, I would cut that check for $22.5B and then turn around and sell those shares for $62.25B (or anywhere near it) and call it a day! Then again, SoftBank's $30B investment could prove to be worth upwards of $100B in the future if OpenAI joins the 4 comma club.

Salesforce acquired Qualified, a B2B conversational marketing platform that helps companies identify and engage high-intent website visitors using chat, scheduling, and automation tools, for an undisclosed amount estimated to be around $500M. Qualified, which was started by the former CMO of Salesforce, bills itself as the number one pipeline generation platform for Salesforce customers. The acquisition will help Salesforce offer a more comprehensive agentic B2B marketing solution, broadening its Agentforce platform offerings to deliver real-time, AI-driven engagement solutions for inbound interaction improvements and handoffs between service teams.

Lovable, the Swedish AI-powered app builder that lets users create full-stack web applications using natural-language prompts instead of code, raised $300M in a Series B round led by CapitalG and Menlo Ventures’ Anthology fund at a $6.6B valuation, more than tripling its valuation from just five months ago. The deal comes just one month after Lovable announced it had hit $200M in annual recurring revenue. The funding will be used to deepen integrations with existing tech partners, enhance collaboration and governance to make Lovable better suited for enterprise use, and build additional infrastructure to help support taking products from prototype to production.

Coursera and Udemy, two of the Internet's biggest online learning platforms, announced a merger agreement valued at $2.5B that'll bring the two operations under one roof. Coursera will acquire Udemy in a all-stock transaction set to close in the second half of next year. Coursera recently announced an integration with ChatGPT and a content partnership with Anthropic, while Udemy rolled out a new AI-powered microlearning experience, which aims to give students shorter, personalized lessons.

Impact, a partnership marketing platform that helps brands manage, track, and scale affiliate and creator partnerships, made an undisclosed strategic investment in Evertune, a generative engine optimization platform that helps brands monitor and improve how they appear and are cited in AI-generated search results. As part of the deal, Impact will integrate Evertune's AI visibility and brand monitoring data directly into its platform, enabling brands to see how and where they appear in AI answers and which creators influence those recommendations. Brands can then activate partnerships with those creators through Evertune’s Partner Connect, turning AI search insight into executable affiliate and creator campaigns.

Phia, an AI-powered shopping app co-founded by Phoebe Gates and her former roommate Sophia Kianni, raised $30M in a round led by Notable Capital at a $180M valuation, just months after raising $8M in a seed round. The company has developed an AI search engine, offered as an app and browser extension for Chrome and Safari, that helps users find items, compare prices, and spot deals. The tool has been downloaded 750,000 times since its launch 8 months ago.

Noon, a MENA-based e-commerce platform and delivery company, raised $500M from existing backers including the Saudi Public Investment Fund and Emaar's Founder, Mohammed Alabbar, as it prepares for a potential IPO. In September, the company said it had raised $2.7B to date and held a valuation close to $10B. The funding arrives as competition in the region heats up, with Amazon pushing further into groceries, China’s Meituan entering the Middle East with food delivery and dark-store operations, and Saudi-based Ninja scaling its quick-commerce model after raising $250M earlier this year.

Wildberries & Russ, a Russian e-commerce and advertising group formed through the merger of online marketplace Wildberries and outdoor advertising operator Russ, acquired Rive Gauche, a Russian beauty and cosmetics retailer operating a nationwide chain of stores and an e-commerce platform, for an undisclosed amount estimated to be around $75.7M. The takeover followed a strategic partnership that integrated Rive Gauche's 252 brick-and-mortar stores with Wildberries, offering in-store pickup and a dedicated section in the online retailer’s catalog.

UpCharge, a Shopify app that helps merchants automatically calculate and display region-specific fees, duties, and surcharges in a transparent way for customers, raised $900k from Capitaliply. The funding will be used to expand UpCharge’s infrastructure, enhance features for enterprise merchants, and support global growth, as well as support plans to add predictive fee modeling and broader POS support in 2026.

Turbopuffer, an Ottawa startup launched by former Shopify engineers that aims to “make every byte searchable,” raised an undisclosed amount of funding from existing backer Lachy Groom and new investor Thrive Capital. The company describes itself as a “fast search engine that combines vector and full-text search using object storage” to help AI clients search their data more quickly and affordably and currently works with big-name clients like Anthropic, Atlassian, Cursor, and Notion. Turbopuffer says it now manages trillions of vectors and tens of petabytes and has grown recurring revenue to tens of millions of dollars.

Flipkart acquired a majority stake in Minivet AI, a year-old AI and machine learning solutions provider, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition will help Flipkart enhance its visual commerce capabilities, particularly in converting static product catalog images into video content at scale. The company says that the acquisition is a strategic move to build and invest in core gen-AI capabilities at a time when e-commerce is rapidly shifting towards visual, conversational and AI-led discovery.

Tyro Payments, an Australian payments and banking provider that offers card acquiring, terminals, and business accounts for SMBs, agreed to acquire Thriday, an all-in-one financial management platform that combines business banking, accounting, and tax in a single product, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition is part of Tyro's strategy to grow its banking and payments capabilities, and will enable the company to accelerate the delivery of integrated, all-in-one cash flow management solutions.

MoEngage, a customer engagement platform that helps consumer brands personalize marketing across mobile, web, email, and messaging channels using data and automation, raised $180M in a Series F round led by ChrysCapital and Dragon Funds, bringing its total amount raised to $280M. The round follows a $100M round announced just one month ago in November 2025. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate innovation in its Merlin AI suite, scale its go-to-market teams in North America and EMEA, and explore strategic acquisitions.

Rezolve AI, a London-based AI platform that enables retailers to power conversational shopping, product discovery, and transactions, acquired Crownpeak, a Denver-based digital experience platform that provides content management, digital quality, and compliance tools for enterprise brands, for $90M in cash and equity, plus the assumption of $150M in debt. The deal adds more than 400 enterprise customers and about $70M in expected annual revenue, spanning retail, manufacturing, beauty, and financial services. Rezolve plans to integrate Crownpeak’s digital experience platform with its Brain Suite AI technology to extend conversational commerce, agentic support, and transaction capabilities across enterprise content and commerce systems.

Rev Delivery, a U.S. last-mile logistics and delivery platform, acquired Duffl, a delivery startup that operates app-based convenience stores offering ultra-fast delivery of snacks, drinks, and essentials for college students and urban customers, for an undisclosed amount. The deal brings together Duffl’s brand, technology, and national footprint with Rev Delivery’s founder-led execution model, which reached roughly $1.6M in annual revenue in its first year. The combined company is shifting to a licensing model for founder-operated campus stores and plans to expand from eight locations to hundreds over the coming years.

Imprint, a fintech that helps brands launch and manage co-branded credit cards with integrated rewards, underwriting, and compliance, raised $150M in a Series D round led by Khosla Ventures at a $1.2B valuation, officially making the company a unicorn. The company reported 200% YoY growth in its cardholder base and new partnerships with Rakuten, Booking.com, Crate & Barrel, and Fetch and plans to use the capital to expand beyond credit cards into additional financial products, invest in automation and AI, and scale its loyalty and rewards network.

Pattern, an e-commerce accelerator that helps brands grow and manage their marketplace businesses across platforms like Amazon, Walmart, and Tmall, acquired NextWave, a TikTok commerce agency that helps brands scale sales through TikTok Shop, creator partnerships, and performance-driven social commerce strategies. The deal adds more than 1,200 managed creators and over 300,000 TikTok affiliates to Pattern’s social commerce capabilities. Pattern plans to integrate NextWave’s TikTok Shop expertise with its marketplace technology to support brands across TikTok Shop and other global ecommerce platforms.

Octane, a fintech that provides instant digital financing for powersports, outdoor equipment, and specialty vehicle purchases, raised $100M in a Series F round led by Valar Ventures at a $1.3B valuation. The company has originated more than $7.5B in loans since its founding and expects to generate about $80M in adjusted EBITDA in 2025. Octane plans to continue expanding its instant financing and white-label captive lending platform across large-ticket consumer purchase categories.

Elliott Management, a U.S.-based global investment firm known for its activist strategies, acquired a $1B+ stake in Lululemon, a Canadian athletic apparel company that sells premium activewear, making it one of the company’s largest shareholders. The activist investor has been working with former Ralph Lauren executive Jane Nielsen and views her as a potential CEO candidate following Lululemon CEO Calvin McDonald’s planned departure in January. The move comes as Lululemon’s shares remain down about 60% from their peak two years ago amid increased competition and product execution challenges.

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Paul E. Drecksler
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PS: Why are Santa's helpers depressed? Because they have low elf-esteem.