• Shopify increased its acquihiring amid a hot market for AI talent.
• The company completed six small acquisitions last year to bolster its technical AI leadership.
• It also brought on an AI and machine learning veteran as its new chief technology officer.

Shopify has stepped up its acquihiring as the race for AI talent heats up.

CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call earlier this month that Shopify had done six "tuck-in" acquisitions in the previous year.

He said that while the deals were small from a financial perspective, they've been an important source of talent and a tactic the company plans to continue.

"These have been very tactical, thoughtful AI hires and we want to continually be thoughtful, proactive, and judicious on thinking about the cash," he said.

Many of the founders that Shopify has hired now hold leadership positions in the company's product org. That includes Nicolas Grasset, the former CEO of AI-driven analytics startup Peel Insights. Shopify brought on the Peel team in May, and Grasset is now a director of product. Relay Commerce acquired the business itself.

Ray Reddy, cofounder and CEO of mobile ordering app Ritual, became a VP of product for retail at Shopify this January as part of an acquihire deal that also included his cofounder, Larry Stinson, and some engineering staff.

"I'm inspired by the opportunity to help local businesses adapt and thrive as generative AI reshapes customer expectations—a moment that reminds me of launching Ritual over a decade ago during the rise of mobile internet," Reddy wrote in a LinkedIn post about his joining Shopify. "I'm excited to join a team poised to help businesses of all sizes succeed as technology rapidly evolves."

Keeping up in a 'white-hot' market

Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, said Shopify's increased acquihire activity is likely a product of the "white-hot" market for engineers with AI credibility.

"Hiring individuals is sometimes too slow or too expensive," Luria said. "Sometimes it's easier to just buy a small company that has AI engineers just for the talent."

Rousseau Kazi, former CEO of workplace communications platform Threads, joined Shopify's product org when Shopify acquihired the startup's team in June. Michael Averto, cofounder and former CEO of inventory operations platform ChannelApe, began working on inventory management as a product leader at Shopify as part of a deal in July.

Shopify also hired the team behind Stellate, a startup that made developer tools. Cofounder and former CEO Max Stoiber is now a director of engineering leading teams working on Liquid, Shopify's template language for storefronts. In September open-source developer group The Guild acquired Stellate's product and customer base.

Shopify also acquired Checkout Blocks, a checkout customization app, in June and hired Gil Greenberg as a product lead working on checkout extensibility. The Checkout Blocks app is still available for download in the Shopify App Store.

Luria said that Shopify's growth over the years has largely been organic and not from acquisitions. Shopify did invest billions into building its fulfillment network, acquiring Deliverr for more than $2 billion before selling it and the rest of its logistics business to Flexport. Shopify has since described its fulfillment work as a "side quest."

The past year is not the first time Shopify has used acquihires to bring on valuable talent. In 2018 it acquired the team behind Swedish shopping startup Tictail, and many of those leaders were key to the growth of its Shop app. It also acquired the B2B commerce marketplace Handshake in 2019, and those founders have gone on to hold product leadership roles at Shopify.

Shopify is also doubling down on AI talent in other ways. In August, the company hired Mikhail Parakhin as its new CTO. Parakhin led AI advancements like Copilot at Microsoft and also developed search engines and cloud services for more than four years as Yandex's CTO.

Hoffmeister also said during the earnings call that Shopify would continue to make strategic investments in startups building tech that its merchants would find valuable. Its 2024 investments included participation in a pre-seed round for Convergence, which is building an AI agent called Proxy.

Got a tip? Contact this reporter at [email protected], [email protected], or on the secure messaging app Signal at @mlstone.04.

• Jack Ma is the billionaire founder of Alibaba and Ant Group.
• Ma has experienced financial success as well as scrutiny due to his many business ventures.
• He grew up poor and faced multiple job rejections but amassed billions. Here's a look at Ma's life.

Jack Ma, Alibaba and Ant Group founder, has been making moves during the last year after a lengthy hiatus. 

Ma, who disappeared from public view in 2020 and resurfaced in Thailand in January 2023, most recently made news when he appeared at a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping alongside other private business leaders on February 17.

Ma faced a crackdown from Chinese regulators in 2020 that resulted in an antitrust investigation, a suspended IPO, and Ma losing $12 billion of his fortune in just a few months. 

However, Ma quietly made moves throughout 2023, including a teaching gig at Tokyo College, investing in an agrotech startup, and incorporating a pre-packaged food company.

According to Bloomberg, his net worth is now estimated at $39.7 billion. In July 2023, China hit Ant Group with a nearly $1 billion fine, marking the end of its crackdown, The Wall Street Journal reported.

While Ma has had a challenging few years, adversity is nothing new to him. He grew up poor in communist China, failed his university entrance exam twice, and was rejected from dozens of jobs, including one at KFC, before finding success with his third internet company, Alibaba.

Here's how Ma got his start and made his fortune.

Jillian D'Onfro, Charles Clark, and Taylor Nicole Rogers contributed to an earlier version of this post.

The Chinese businessman is 59 years old.

Jack Ma — born Ma Yun — was born on September 10, 1964, in Hangzhou, southeastern China. He has an older brother and a younger sister, USA Today reported.

 

He doesn't come from money.

He and his siblings grew up at a time when communist China was increasingly isolated from the West, and his family didn't have much money when they were young, per 60 Minutes.

Ma was scrawny and often got into fights with classmates. "I was never afraid of opponents who were bigger than I," he recalls in "Alibaba," a book by Liu Shiying and Martha Avery.

As a kid, Ma liked collecting crickets and making them fight, and was able to distinguish the size and type of cricket just by the sound it made, according to USA Today.

When he became a teen, he offered travelers tours of his city in exchange for English lessons. That's how ended up with the nickname Jack, 60 Minutes reported.

 

It took Ma three tries to get into college.

After high school, he applied to go to college — but failed the entrance exam twice. He finally passed on the third try, going on to attend Hangzhou Teachers Institute. At the World Economic Forum in 2016, Ma revealed he has been rejected from Harvard— 10 times.

He graduated in 1988 and started applying to as many jobs as he could.

He received more than a dozen rejections — including from KFC — before being hired as an English teacher at a university. Ma was a natural with his students and loved his job — though he only made $12 a month at a local university.

 

 

 

Ma keeps his family life private, but he's been married for decades.

Ma married Zhang Ying, a teacher he met at school after they graduated in the late 1980s. They have two children — a daughter and a son, according to Bloomberg.

 

Ma got the idea to start an internet company during a trip to America.

Ma had no experience with computers or coding, but he was captivated by the internet when he used it for the first time during a trip to the US in 1995. He had recently started a translation business and made the trip to help a Chinese firm recover a payment.

Ma's first online search was "beer," but he was surprised to find that no Chinese beers turned up in the results. It was then that he decided to found an internet company for China.

 

He founded Alibaba in 1999, and its success was nearly instant.

Though his first two ventures failed, four years later, he gathered 17 of his friends in his apartment and convinced them to invest in his vision for an online marketplace he called "Alibaba." The site allowed exporters to post product listings that customers could buy directly.

Soon, the service started to attract members from all over the world. By October 1999, the company had raised $5 million from Goldman Sachs and $20 million from SoftBank, a Japanese telecom company that also invests in technology companies.

The team remained close-knit and scrappy. "We will make it because we are young and we never, never give up," Ma said to a gathering of employees.

Ma was given the nickname "Crazy Jack" by reporters during his company's mid-2000s rivalry with eBay.

He was known for maintaining a sense of fun at Alibaba. In the early 2000s, when the company decided to start Taobao, its eBay competitor, he had his team do handstands during breaks to keep their energy levels up.

When the company first became profitable, Ma gave each employee a can of Silly String to go wild with.

 

Yahoo invested in Alibaba in 2005.

In 2005, Yahoo invested $1 billion in Alibaba in exchange for about a 40% stake in the company. This was huge for Alibaba — at the time it was trying to beat eBay in China — and it would eventually be an enormous win for Yahoo too, netting it $10 billion in Alibaba's IPO alone, TechCrunch reported.

 

Ma stepped down from his post as CEO in 2013.

Alibaba went public on the New York Stock Exchange on September 19, 2014.

The company's $150 billion IPO was the largest offering for a US-listed company in the history of the NYSE. It also made Ma the richest person in China, with an estimated worth of $25 billion at the time, Bloomberg reported.

"Today what we got is not money. What we got is the trust from the people," Ma told CNBC at the time.

Ma stayed on as chairman at Alibaba until 2019. That year it was reported he 

 

Ma owns stakes in Alibaba and a payment-processing service.

Alibaba reported in 2022 that Ma owned 3.7% of the company both directly and through holding companies, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Ma owns a 10% stake in payment-processing service Alipay, which rebranded to Ant Group in 2014, according the company's prospectus filing in 2020.

 

One of his greatest passions is the environment.

According to Fortune, Ma developed an interest in environmentalism when a member of his wife's family became sick with an illness that Ma suspected was caused by pollution.

He sat on the global board of The Nature Conservancy and spoke during a session of the Clinton Global Initiative in 2015. He was also, according to Fortune, instrumental in funding a 27,000-acre nature reserve in China.

 

The biggest day in the calendar for Alibaba is China's "Singles' Day" — a retaliation to Valentine's Day — which supposedly celebrates the country's singletons.

It's also known as the Global Shopping Festival in Alibaba reports, and it takes place on November 11. In 2021, the e-commerce giant reported nearly $85 million on Singles' Day. Taylor Swift performed at the company's Singles' Day event in 2019.

 

 

Ma appears humble despite his financial success.

Alibaba's success may have made Ma an extremely wealthy man, but he still has some pretty modest hobbies.

"I don't think he has changed much, he is still that old style," Xiao-Ping Chen, a friend of Ma, told USA Today. He likes reading and writing kung fu fiction, playing poker, meditating, and practicing tai chi.

Ma once told employees at a press conference in 2014 that he hoped they use their newfound wealth to become "a batch of genuinely noble people, a batch of people who are able to help others, and who are kind and happy."

Even though Ma has kept his humble hobbies, he has also splurged on a French chateau and a plane for Alibaba.

Ma bought a vineyard and a chateau in Bordeaux, France, in 2016, according to CNBC. And in March 2013, Alibaba spent a reported $49.7 million on a Gulfstream G550, mostly for Ma's use, according to China Daily.

 

 

In 2017, Ma made headlines after meeting President Donald Trump.

Despite Trump's protectionist attitude towards trade, Ma said China and the United States were not about to be drawn into a trade war.

"Give Trump some time. He's open-minded," Ma told a panel at the World Economic Forum in January 2017.

 

Ma is something of a celebrity in China.

Crowds of people show up to listen to him speak. The company also hosts annual talent shows, and Ma is a natural entertainer. At a company anniversary event, he dressed up as a punk rocker for a performance in front of 20,000 Alibaba employees, according to 60 Minutes.

In 2014, Ma told Bloomberg he knew Alibaba had made it big when another customer offered to pay his restaurant bill.

The customer, Ma said in the interview, had left Ma a note that read: "I'm your customer of Alibaba group, I made a lot of money and I know you don't make any money. I'll pay the bill for you.".

 

Ma stepped down as Alibaba's chairman on his 55th birthday and chose a former Alibaba CEO to replace him.

He left the position on September 10, 2019. The company threw him a farewell party in an 80,000-seat stadium in Hangzhou, and Ma performed with other Alibaba executives.

Ma picked Daniel Zhang, who was named the CEO of Alibaba in 2015, to replace him as chairman. According to CNN Business, Ma decided to pivot to full-time philanthropy.

 

When COVID-19 rocked the world, Ma sprung into action.

When the coronavirus pandemic brought the world to a halt in March 2020, Ma sourced and shipped N95 face masks and COVID-19 testing kits to over 100 countries dealing with shortages, including the US.

 

In May 2020, SoftBank announced that Ma would resign from the troubled investment fund's board of directors.

"Stepping down from SoftBank Group's Board, I believe, and he said to me actually, was something that he decided on his own," SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said during the firm's earnings announcement.

"That's sad, but we still keep in contact directly, and right before the COVID-19, we met face-to-face every month to have dinner, to talk about businesses, to talk about lives. And we will remain friends for the rest of our life, I believe."

 

In October 2020, Ma made headlines again in relation to Ant Group's highly anticipated IPO.

Ant Group was expected to raise $37 billion with a valuation reportedly surpassing $300 billion. But then, Ma publicly snubbed China's financial regulatory system, calling it "an old people's club."

Soon after, regulators introduced new online lending rules that directly impacted Ant's business.

Officials then said there were "major issues" with Ant's listing, and by November 2020, the IPO was suspended.

It was expected to serve as a "stamp of approval" for disruptors in the traditional banking sector before the new rules changed the IPO's trajectory.

Chinese regulators opened an antitrust investigation into Alibaba in December 2020, yet another crackdown on Ma's empire.

Regulators said they were launching an anti-monopoly investigation into Alibaba and held talks about stricter financial regulations with Ant Group.

As part of the investigation, China's State Administration for Market Regulation looked into the contracts Alibaba asked sellers to sign.

 

Amid the investigation, speculation began on whether Ma was missing in 2021.

In January 2021, Yahoo Finance reported that Ma hadn't been seen publicly in more than two months and had been replaced as a judge on the TV talent show he founded, which raised the question of whether Ma had gone missing.

Ma isn't the first Chinese businessman to disappear from the public eye under such circumstances.

Ma's absence mirrored similar situations where Chinese businessmen had disappeared after battling with regulators.

But multiple sources said that Ma was not missing — he was simply "laying low" amid the government scrutiny and new regulations.

Ma appeared to resurface in Thailand in January 2023.

A post shared by JAY FAI (เจ๊ไฝ)⭐️ (@jayfaibangkok)

Jay Fai restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand, posted a photo of Jack Ma on Instagram. The caption read: "Incredibly humble, we are honored to welcome you and your family to Jay Fai's."

His reappearance came as Ant Group said it was streamlining voting rights to prevent any one shareholder from having a controlling vote.

 

His net worth is now estimated at around $30 billion, making him China's seventh-richest person in 2023.

Once China's richest man, Ma's net worth has fallen by more than $20 billion since he disappeared from public view, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

In November, Forbes reported that Ma was the seventh richest man in China in 2023 behind businessman Robin Zeng.

 

In May of 2023, Ma accepted a teaching role at Tokyo College.

It's unclear if Ma is still teaching, but he was expected to conduct research on sustainable agriculture and food production. Tokyo College said that Ma would "share his rich experience and pioneering knowledge on entrepreneurship, corporate management and innovation" with students, according to the May announcement.

 

Ma began advising Alibaba in May, and held a meeting of company execs the same month.

In the meeting, Ma suggested cutting out managers at Taobao and Tmall to combat the "very severe" competition the e-commerce platforms face. Other tech giants, particularly those in Silicon Valley, have also gotten rid of middle managers.

China appeared to be nearing an end to its nearly three-year investigation into Ant Group in July.

China's crackdown on technology firms appeared to be coming to an end after regulators issued a $1 billion fine to Ant Group in July, according to WSJ.

 

 

One of Ma's latest business ventures is a China-based agrotech startup.

It appears that while Ma was out of the public eye, he was studying agrotech. As of July 2023, Hangzhou Dajingtou No. 22 Arts and Culture Co., one of Ma's investment-holdings companies, has a 10% stake in 1.8 Meters Marine Technology (Zhejiang) Co, an agrotech startup.

 

Ma incorporated a company called "Hangzhou Ma's Kitchen Food" in November.

Ma's latest company reportedly deals with the sales of pre-packaged food and processing and selling agricultural products. But, Ma hasn't shared much about his desire to move into agriculture.

"I found that a place that does well in agriculture is not necessarily a place with good resources, but a place with unique thinking and people with imagination," he said during a speech to teachers last August.

He added, "The rural areas do need technology, while I think unique thinking and creativity are important as well."

He began buying shares in Alibaba during the fourth quarter of 2023.

Alibaba's stock began to rally in January 2024 after Ma reversed his plans to sell his shares and invested more in the company instead.

Ma spent $50 million on Alibaba's Hong Kong-listed shares over the last few months of 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported. The tech giant's stock started slipping in November, prompting Ma to rethink his plan of investing in his other business ventures over Alibaba.

Ma's wife acquired three adjoining properties in Singapore for up to $37 million, Business Times reported.

In February 2024, The Business Times reported that Zhang Ying, a Singaporean citizen, bought three properties known as shophouses in the Tanjong Pagar area of Singapore.

The three-story shophouses are reportedly situated on commercial-zoned sites, and this type of real estate is popular in Singapore, according to Bloomberg. The shophouses are said to be nearly done with refurbishments, and at least one story will be a restaurant.

Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Ma and other prominent business leaders to discuss the country's future.

Ma joined a number of Chinese founders and CEOs in a summit with Xi on February 17. The meeting centered around China's private sector as Xi encouraged leaders from companies like Huawei, DeepSeek, and more to remain ambitious and believe in their country, Reuters reported.

The Alibaba CEO made a rare public appearance to attend the meeting where Xi said the government would work to protect private businesses to help promote China's economy.

Ma previously spoke out against China's crackdown on the tech sector in 2020. This meeting signaled that Xi may be reconsidering the tough restrictions on private companies amid global tariffs from the US.

• DTC brands say the sudden policy changes of the past weeks have had them in turmoil.
• Some businesses said the delay in the changes has made it even more difficult to plan.
• Retailers are in limbo until a timeline and implementation plan for the end of de mimimis is set.

Some brand owners feel like "collateral damage" in a global trade war after the Trump administration temporarily reversed its decision to end de minimis shipments. The sudden reversal was just the latest in a series of whiplash moves that have made it hard for brands to plan their next steps.

Jamie Ferguson-Woods is the founder and CEO of Victoria Emerson, a Canadian direct-to-consumer jewelry brand. When the Trump administration announced that it would be closing the de minimis loophole, Victoria Emerson halted its sales promotions and turned off its Meta ads.

Ferguson-Woods said the brand, which gets the vast majority of its sales from US consumers, would likely need to move its business to the US to survive. The delayed implementation gives them some much-needed time to get there.

"For a small business to move a warehouse, it's not something you can just do overnight," he told Business Insider.

For many brands, the uncertainty that ensued with Trump's executive order was a reminder of how razor-thin margins are in the retail business — and how easily disrupted their supply chains are.

Reuters reported that more than a million packages had piled up at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York in the three days when the loophole was closed. Section 321, also known as de minimis, allows importers to avoid paying duty and tax on shipments that are valued at less than $800 and going directly to customers. Shippers using de minimis do not have to provide as much information to US Customs and Border Protection as shippers using more traditional methods would.

The mountain of packages prompted a meeting between CBP and logistics professionals, Reuters reported.

The Trump administration said it would pause its repeal of the de minimis loophole, giving customs officials time to implement a new process for collecting duty on packages sent using the loophole. However, it did not provide a timeline for when de minimis shipments would officially no longer be allowed, leaving brands wondering if they should still make adjustments to their supply chain — and when.

Some Canadian brands that sell to US customers are being hit particularly hard because they could face the double impact of tariffs on Canadian goods and the end of de minimis.

Katherine Homuth is the founder and CEO of SRTX, which manufactures tights under the Sheertex brand. Nearly half of the Canadian company's revenue comes from shipments to the US using the de minimis exemption.

When Trump issued an executive order on tariffs and de minimis, the company temporarily laid off 40% of its 350 employees. The team is now considering shifting some inventory to the US, but it would prefer to work with Canadian retailers and reduce its dependence on the US altogether. It's also working on sourcing yarn in the US to eliminate some of the tariff impact.

Homuth told BI the delay of the implementation "does not remove the risk," she said, adding: "In fact, it creates more uncertainty, making it harder to plan around these costs."

The return of de minimis wasn't the only time that brands experienced whiplash in recent weeks.

Tariffs on goods entering the US from both Canada and Mexico were delayed a month as the Trump administration negotiated with both countries. On February 4, the US Postal Service temporarily said it would not accept parcels from China or Hong Kong, only to reverse course less than a day later.

'All options are still on the table'

DTC bra brand ThirdLove fulfills its orders out of two different warehouses: one in Indianapolis and one in Vancouver. The company's senior director of operations, Andreas Andrea, said they had already been considering consolidating the two facilities to be more efficient. The tariffs and uncertainty around de minimis have made that decision more urgent.

"The question we've had this whole time is: which way do we go? Do we go all the way to Canada, put everything in Canada, assuming that Section 321 stays, or do we bring everything to the United States, assuming that it goes away?" he said.

"If it takes a year for it to go away or two years for it to go away, you've given up a lot of duty savings that you would've had. How do you predict what that timing is going to be like?"

"All options are still on the table," Andrea said.

The delays give brands time to troubleshoot, but some are finding that if tariffs were to go into effect as outlined, the hit to their profits would be steep.

Juliana Casale runs seltzer brand Balloon from Canada. She previously made a profit of about $18 per order, but tariffs and the end of de minimis would lower that profit to about $8 per order.

"I was considering lowering shipping costs or absorbing more of the cost myself," she said. "But it makes it a lot harder when I don't really have that much left on the profit to sink into that."

Do you have a story to share? Contact this reporter at [email protected], [email protected], or on Signal at @mlstone.04.

• Kanye West's Super Bowl ad pointed people to YEEZY.com, which was later updated to feature only a swastika T-shirt.
• After the listing received backlash, Shopify removed the website on Tuesday.
• Shopify has faced criticism before for hosting controversial stores, leading to policy changes.

Four days of Kanye West controversy came to a head on Tuesday when the artist's website was taken offline after facing backlash.

The website was removed by the vendor powering it, Shopify, less than 48 hours after West's Super Bowl ad directed viewers to a storefront selling a single item: a swastika T-shirt labeled "HH-01."

A Shopify spokesperson confirmed to BI on Tuesday morning the company had removed the store.

"All merchants are responsible for following the rules of our platform. This merchant did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms so we removed them from Shopify," the spokesperson said.

On Friday, West, whose legal name is Ye, posted a slew of social media posts on X praising Adolf Hitler, describing himself as a Nazi, and defending music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs, who was arrested in September and charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution. Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Ye also purchased a 30-second ad that aired during Super Bowl LIX. Unlike the national Super Bowl ads that reached a cost of north of $8 million for 30 seconds of airtime this year, the Yeezy team instead purchased ad slots on local stations — which would have come at a lower price.

The ads ran on local Fox stations in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, and some other affiliate stations, according to USIM, the media agency that brokered the buy.

Doug Livingston, president and chief operating officer of USIM, said the agency immediately ceased working with Yeezy LLC after seeing the "disparaging and vile comments" Ye had posted on X on Friday.

Livingston said Fox had said the media buy was "non-cancelable."

"We informed Fox that they should cease airing any remnant spots immediately upon learning that Yeezy, LLC was promoting vile content," he said.

A Fox insider told BI they received no communication from the agency about requesting to drop the ad until Monday morning after the Super Bowl spot had aired.

The Yeezy Super Bowl spot, which purported to be shot on an iPhone and featured the rapper sitting in a dentist's chair showing off his new teeth, was unlikely to have caused alarm when it was submitted and subsequently approved for broadcast because it didn't contain any obscenities.

"So whassup guys, I spent like all the money for the commercial on these new teeth. So, once again I had to shoot it on the iPhone. Um, um, um, go to Yeezy.com," Ye said in the sparse ad. (Yeezy.com also ran a local spot during last year's Super Bowl, starring Ye.)

At the time of the ad's approval and airing, the Yeezy store displayed a number of items for sale. It was only after the ad was shown that the website was updated to display the swastika T-shirt for sale, according to screenshots of the site captured by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

USIM's Livingston said the agency was unaware that Ye had intended to change the nature of the store's offerings.

"The commercial was to promote general athletic apparel listed on the website," Livingston said.

Along with his website, Ye's X account appears to also be deactivated on the platform as of Tuesday morning.

"Ye is an intergenerational artist and icon who continues to redefine the limits of creativity and free expression. He has deactivated his X account for the time being," spokesperson Milo Yiannopoulos said in a statement to NBC News. Representatives for Ye did not immediately respond to a request for further comment from Business Insider.

Ye was previously banned from X, then known as Twitter, in 2022 after he tweeted an image containing a swastika and the Star of David. His account was later reinstated.

In the hours following the Super Bowl ad airing, many called for the Yeezy site to be taken down.

This week, the Anti-Defamation League, which called the T-shirt listing "further proof of Kanye's antisemitism," encouraged people to sign an open letter calling on Fox Sports to condemn Ye's ad. At the time of writing, the letter had more than 9,000 signatories.

"The swastika is the symbol adopted by Hitler as the primary emblem of the Nazis," the ADL said in a statement posted to X on Monday. "It galvanized his followers in the 20th century and continues to threaten and instill fear in those targeted by antisemitism and white supremacy."

"If that wasn't enough, the t-shirt is labeled on Kanye's website as 'HH-01,' which is code for 'Heil Hitler,'" the statement said.

On Tuesday, talent agent Daniel McCartney of 33 & West announced on Instagram that he would no longer represent Ye "due to his recent harmful and hateful remarks."

Shopify under pressure

Several former Shopify executives, including former chief product officer Craig Miller and former senior director of investor relations Katie Keita, spoke out against the company's hosting of the Yeezy store before it was taken down.

"Even if @Shopify views it as 'morally ambiguous' to empower the exponential buildup of hate toward a religion/ethnicity, it is, at the very least, a grave public disservice," Keita said in a post on X.

It wasn't the first time Shopify has faced criticism for its hosting of an online store. Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke frequently defends free speech and has said he doesn't view it as Shopify's role to police points of view.

In 2020, a legal defense fund was set up for Kyle Rittenhouse via Shopify. After several weeks of criticism, Shopify shut the store down. It also removed sites affiliated with President Donald Trump after a group of pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.

In 2022, critics called for Shopify to remove the store for Libs of TikTok, saying it violated Shopify's acceptable use policy. At the time, that policy said Shopify's platform could not be used to "promote or condone hate or violence against people based on race, ethnicity, color, national origin, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, medical condition, veteran status or other forms of discriminatory intolerance."

Shopify did not remove the Libs of TikTok store as it did not find it to be in violation of the policy, a spokesperson told Business Insider in 2022. That decision frustrated some employees, including some in customer support who fielded complaints from angry customers.

Shopify adjusted its acceptable use policy last year, removing some of the more specific language.

"There are activities we don't allow on the platform because they breach the social contract of commerce," it now reads, in part. "This means you can't call for, or threaten, violence against specific people or groups. And you can't sell products that facilitate intentional self-harm."

• Amazon's warehouse robots have come a long way since it acquired Kiva Systems in 2012.
• Robots can now perform a variety of tasks alongside employees in fulfillment centers.
• They can transport packages, sort individual items, and lift heavy objects.

Amazon's fleet of warehouse robots has swelled to more than 750,000 — and it continues to grow both in size and complexity.

Robots now perform a variety of tasks in Amazon's fulfillment centers, transporting packages around busy workspaces, sorting and consolidating items into storage systems, and making fit-to-size packaging.

The company's robotics efforts started when it acquired Kiva Systems for $775 million in 2012. Kiva's automated guided vehicles navigated by following barcode stickers placed on the floor of a warehouse. More than a decade later, Amazon now has more than 16,000 people working on robotics as its technology has become more sophisticated, including Proteus, a mobile robot that can move autonomously.

Investing in robotics helps Amazon accomplish its goal of getting packages to customers as quickly as possible, Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics, said in a recent interview with Business Insider. Robots also create efficiencies that will help Amazon save money — some $10 billion a year by 2030, Morgan Stanley estimated in a recent research note.

"We can have faster delivery times because of the work that we've done in robotics," Brady said. "We can also pass on a lower cost. And we're creating thousands and thousands of jobs because of the work that we've done in robotics."

In August, Amazon hired three of the robotics startup Covariant's founders and licensed some of its foundation models to bring flexibility and fluidity to its robotics. The company also launched the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund in 2022, investing in companies innovating in emerging tech like robots. That includes an investment in Agility Robotics, which makes a bipedal robot called Digit that Amazon is testing in fulfillment centers.

"We have a commitment for more than $1 billion for our startups, in order to help the startups and the community raise the capital that they need in order to do some of these great ideas that we think are going to help our customers," Brady said.

Here are some examples of the most advanced robots working in Amazon's fulfillment centers, and a bit about what they do:

Proteus

Unlike Amazon's earlier mobile robots, Proteus is fully autonomous. It uses sensors to navigate around objects in its path. It works more closely alongside Amazon employees and is not restricted to fenced-in areas.

Proteus travels under package carts and then transports them to the fulfillment center's loading dock. Brady compared its skills to how humans make their way around a crowded cocktail party.

"Typically a robot, when it sees maybe three, four, or five people gathered together, maybe they're all talking in a circle or something like that, it'll just stop and wait for the folks to kind of disband," he said. "When you're trying to navigate from one side of the room to the other — the Proteus system actually is capable of that. It doesn't just stop."

It launched in a Nashville fulfillment center in 2022.

Sparrow

Sparrow is Amazon's first robotic arm to handle individual items rather than packages. It uses computer vision and AI to pick items from containers and place them into totes. It's roughly the size of an elephant trunk and capable of picking up more than 200 million different items, Brady said.

It was first introduced in a fulfillment center in Richmond, Texas, in 2023.

Sequoia

Sequoia combines AI, robotics, and computer vision into one storage solution. Totes containing items are stored in a vertical platform system called a gantry. Robots then move those totes to ergonomic workstations where employees pick products to be shipped to customers. Once an employee picks items from the totes, Amazon's robotic arm, Sparrow, retrieves any remaining items and then consolidates them so that full totes can be returned to storage.

Amazon says Sequoia allows the company to identify and store products as much as 75% more quickly than before. It was first introduced in a Houston fulfillment center in 2023 and is at the center of Amazon's "next-generation" fulfillment center in Shreveport, Louisiana, where it can handle more than 30 million items.

Hercules

Introduced in Sumner, Washington, in 2017, Hercules is one of Amazon's earlier mobile robots. It moves pods of items around a fenced area of the fulfillment center by using its 3D camera to reference markers on the floor. That camera also helps it differentiate between the various things that may be in its way, like people, pods, or other robots.

It can lift pods that weigh up to 1,250 pounds.

Titan

Titan operates similarly to Hercules but can lift double the weight, up to 2,500 pounds. It made its debut in San Antonio in 2017 and is typically used for bigger items.

Pegasus

First introduced in 2018, Pegasus is a cousin to the Hercules robot that incorporates a conveyor belt on top of the drive unit.

It takes finished packages from employees to a sorting area that's determined by the recipient's ZIP code. Using a route provided by Amazon's centralized planning system, it navigates until it finds the correct location, then drops packages through a chute in the floor to a loading dock below.

Pegasus works in conjunction with Amazon's robotic arm Robin.

Robin

Robin was Amazon's first robotic arm, introduced in Lakeland, Florida, in 2022. It works in tandem with other robotic systems, picking up packages from conveyor belts and placing them on Pegasus mobile robots that bring them elsewhere in the fulfillment center. It also handles damaged packages.

Cardinal

Cardinal, a robotic arm that was introduced in Nashville in 2022, lifts packages and sorts them into the appropriate cart before they are brought out to be loaded onto a truck. Robin and Cardinal both use suction to handle packages weighing up to 50 pounds.

Xanthus

Xanthus is essentially a lighter version of Pegasus. It also has upgraded sensors that allow it to navigate obstacles from further away than Pegasus can.

Also called "X-bot," Xanthus is less expensive to produce than its previous iterations.

Xanthus was initially used for sorting in 2019, but Brady has previously said the company sees it being used elsewhere due to its flexibility.

Packaging Automation

The packaging automation system uses sensors to measure an item and then create packaging that is properly sized for that item, eliminating excess materials. It previously made plastic bags but now makes paper bags. It was first introduced in Euclid, Ohio, in 2023.

• Trump's executive order ending de minimis shipments hurts Shein and Temu.
• The companies have prepared for changes by fulfilling more orders locally in recent years.
• Experts say Shein and Temu's success relies on low prices, not de minimis shipments.

Shein and Temu won't meet an untimely end because of de minimis changes, e-commerce experts say.

The logistics world has been expecting changes to the de minimis exemption for a while, and both Chinese e-commerce players have made some changes to their fulfillment strategies that experts say could help cushion the blow.

Temu and Shein disrupted the e-commerce industry in part by avoiding paying duty on shipments through a provision of customs law called Section 321, also known as de minimis. These shipments came on planes directly from China and were able to make use of the Section 321 provision because they were valued at less than $800 each.

The executive order Trump issued on February 1 effectively closes that loophole for goods originating in China.

"This will certainly have an impact, but it's much smaller than people think," Alex Yancher, CEO of Passport, a startup that helps brands sell globally, told Business Insider.

Going local

Shein and Temu have mainly prepared for de minimis disruption by having more orders fulfilled in the US.

While the majority of its orders were still coming on planes from China, Shein started fulfilling more of them from US warehouses in 2022 and 2023, according to data from ImportGenius that Reuters reported. Shein opened its first US-based warehouse in Whitestown, Indiana, in 2022, and in 2024 it opened an office in Bellevue, Washington, to serve as a hub for its US fulfillment and logistics operations.

Temu also began allowing US-based vendors to sell on its marketplace in 2024. This newer model allowed sellers with warehouses in the US to handle fulfillment and logistics themselves, creating orders that would not need to cross borders before making their way to customers.

Products from those vendors are designated with a "local" badge on their listing page and in search results.

It's not 'RIP Temu and RIP Shein,' experts say

Fulfilling orders locally in the US is a departure from how Shein and Temu started out. But e-commerce experts say it doesn't disrupt the main drivers of their success: ultra-low prices and very trendy items.

Shein, in particular, has a unique model in which it partners directly with manufacturers to create small batches of only the most in-demand items. That model has allowed it to test consumer appetite and turn around clothing designs in a matter of weeks.

Shein's manufacturing model is at the core of what has made the company successful, not its reliance on de minimis shipments, said Kirthi Kalyanam, a professor and executive director of the Retail Management Institute at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University.

"Now that de minimis shipping has been at least tightened up or turned off, I expect whatever price advantage they have due to the de minimis shipping to disappear," Kalyanam said. "But that doesn't mean that their other capabilities are going to go away."

Juozas Kaziukėnas, the founder and CEO of e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse, echoed that sentiment: "I keep seeing 'RIP Temu and RIP Shein' everywhere because of de minimis changes, but while de minimis helped Temu and Shein to get here, it disappearing won't be the end of either."

Representatives for Shein and Temu did not return BI's requests for comment. Both companies have previously said that they do not rely on de minimis to grow their business.

Still, customers could see higher prices and longer shipping times.

"De minimis clearance was very simple — almost an electronic data exchange that theoretically costs between five and 10 cents per shipment," Derek Lossing, founder of supply chain advisory firm Cirrus Global Advisors, said. "With a more formal clearance now required, that will add friction to the process, and cost."

US Customs and Border Protection said in a January press release that de minimis shipments increased by more than 600% between 2015 and 2023, going from 139 million a year to more than 1 billion. More than 1.36 billion shipments were sent via de minimis in 2024, according to CBP.

While the logistics world has been expecting change for some time, many were surprised by the speed with which it went into effect. In lieu of several months to adjust their supply chain operations to comply with any potential policy changes, they had days.

The global trade situation continues to evolve quickly. The tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico have been put on pause, while those on Chinese-made goods have gone ahead. On Tuesday evening, the United States Postal Service said it would no longer accept parcels from China and Hong Kong "until further notice." By Wednesday morning, the USPS had reversed course.

"The USPS and Customs and Border Protection are working closely together to implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery," reads a notice on USPS' website.

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• Amazon's robotics could save the company $10 billion annually by 2030, Morgan Stanley analysts said.
• Amazon has introduced six new robotic systems since 2022.
• Next-gen fulfillment centers are costly, but Amazon has the cash to invest, the analysts wrote.

Amazon has stepped up its robotics development in recent years, and it could save the e-commerce giant as much as $10 billion annually, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a research note on Sunday.

The company's fleet of more than 750,000 robots now works across every part of the fulfillment process. They help with storage and inventory management, picking, packing, and sorting, and they transport packages to the fulfillment center's loading dock, where they are then sent to customers.

Since 2022 Amazon has introduced six new models. They include a fully autonomous mobile robot called Proteus, three types of robotic arms, and a containerized storage system called Sequoia. Amazon also has robots that can create custom packaging based on an item's specific dimensions.

Amazon opened its first "next-generation" fulfillment center, incorporating all of its latest robots, in Shreveport, Louisiana, in September. The company has said it expects to see a 25% improvement in fulfillment costs during peak periods at the Shreveport warehouse.

Morgan Stanley analysts estimated that if 30% to 40% of Amazon orders in the US were fulfilled through next-gen warehouses by 2030, the company could save as much as $10 billion a year.

They noted, however, that fully scaling robotics would take time.

"Looking ahead, we expect AMZN to continue to expand its warehouse network (to support growth) while also upgrading the footprint toward next-gen robotics in new builds and retrofits," they wrote. "The question of how quickly Amazon shifts volumes to robotics enabled warehouses will likely come down to reasonable and improving paces of build/retrofit (current new robotics plants still take 1-2 years) balanced with not wanting to cause near-term disruption to AMZN's retail service."

Next-gen fulfillment centers are significantly more expensive to develop than Amazon's traditional fulfillment centers. The analysts cited news reports that say the robotic-powered warehouses cost about $450 million to develop, compared with $200 million for traditional development and $100 million to retrofit an older warehouse with robotics.

"We estimate AMZN will have $60bn of net cash as of year-end '24 and will generate ~$150bn of aggregate free cash flow in '25/'26," they wrote. "As such, investment capital is unlikely to be a constraint to how quickly AMZN shifts to next-gen robotics...which means if they can build and shift without service disruption they likely will do it."

The analysts also said that if Amazon invested further in bringing robots to sorting centers and in scaling the technology internationally, it could see more savings.

• President Trump's executive order on tariffs has contributed to market volatility.
• The executive order also targets the de minimis customs loophole and has brands scrambling.
• Brands are considering raising their prices and using other entry methods for their goods.

President Trump's Saturday executive order placing tariffs on goods from China, Canada, and Mexico sent shockwaves through global markets.

But another part of the order has also had e-commerce brands scrambling for solutions. It targets a loophole in US customs law that has been used by e-commerce disruptors like Shein and Temu and many American companies.

Section 321, also known as de minimis, allows importers to avoid paying duty and tax on shipments that are valued at less than $800 and going directly to customers. Shippers using de minimis do not have to provide as much information to US Customs and Border Protection as shippers using more traditional methods would. Opponents of the provision have argued that since de minimis shipments are often not inspected, they have allowed bad actors to import illicit goods like fentanyl into the US.

Saturday's executive order closes that loophole, at least in part. However, there are still uncertainties regarding the future of de minimis.

The executive order imposes tariffs on goods originating in China, Mexico, and Canada and specifically calls out Canada for its failure "to do more to arrest, seize, detain, or otherwise intercept DTOs [drug trafficking organizations], other drug and human traffickers, criminals at large, and drugs." It does not mention de minimis shipments originating in countries aside from the three listed, leaving open the possibility that the loophole could still be used elsewhere.

DTC brands are scrambling

Companies that have relied on de minimis are trying to quickly make changes to their business models.

Maggie Barnett, CEO of third-party logistics provider LVK, said that some direct-to-consumer brands she spoke with over the weekend are facing cash-flow issues because they have relied on the de minimis provision to import their goods into Mexico or Canada before shipping them to customers in the US duty-free. They may have to raise their prices.

"They're used to not having to pay this money upfront before sales come, if at all," Barnett told Business Insider.

She said the company is advising its customers to weigh their options before revamping their supply chains in response to the executive order.

"Making changes to your supply chain can be very costly, and you wouldn't want to completely change your supply chain and then have a new announcement drop," she said. "I would urge all brands to be very cautious and to find optionality in their approach to their supply chains."

That could mean working with a US-based third-party logistics company if they don't already, or starting to work with suppliers in countries not affected by the executive order.

Portless, a startup that replicates Shein's model by fulfilling online brands' orders in China and then shipping them directly to customers, told BI on Monday that it would shift to using other methods like Entry Type 11. Entry 11 is faster than traditional types of import, but it does require importers to pay tax. Portless will now pay its customers' import duties upfront and then issue a monthly invoice for brands to cover.

"We've been preparing for this potential change over the last few months," CEO Izzy Rosenzweig said.

Some US politicians have called for reform to the de minimis provision in recent years, arguing it creates unfair competition for American companies and furthers trade of illicit goods.

The rise of Shein and Temu has brought further attention to the loophole. An interim 2023 report from the US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party said that Shein and Temu "likely" account for more than 30% of all shipments made to the US under the de minimis provision. It added that almost 50% of all de minimis shipments to the US come from China. Both Shein and Temu have pushed back on the notion that they rely on de minimis to grow their business.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced 25% retaliatory tariffs on the US following Trump's executive order. The tariffs on Mexico, meanwhile, have been delayed a month after Trump reached an agreement with Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum on Monday.

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• Investors are opening their wallets to social-shopping startups as TikTok's US future sits in limbo.
• Companies like Whatnot and ShopMy have raised rounds in the tens of millions of dollars.
• Upstarts are also making acquisitions and launching creator funds to capitalize on the moment.

The moment is ripe for social-commerce startups in the US.

Investors are betting big on platforms like Whatnot and ShopMy. In January, Whatnot said it closed a $265 million fundraising round after crossing $3 billion in livestream sales in 2024. ShopMy also said it closed a new round worth $77.5 million after reaching profitability.

"The timing of this raise aligns with a fundamental shift we're seeing in the market — creator marketing is evolving from an experimental channel into a core performance driver for brands," ShopMy's CEO Harry Rein told Business Insider.

Part of the category's momentum stems from TikTok. Over the past year, the company helped popularize livestream selling and connect thousands of merchants with influencers via its e-commerce tool, Shop.

But the app's US future is uncertain. It's disappeared from app stores and faces other fallout from a divest-or-ban law that requires its Chinese owner to separate from its US assets. Some e-commerce partners are testing alternative platforms to diversify where they sell.

Outside ShopMy and Whatnot, apps like Flip are gaining steam this month. Flip, a TikTok-like app focused on user-generated product reviews, recently landed in the top 10 in Apple's app-store rankings. Flip could benefit from a TikTok ban if the company fails to find a path forward by an April deadline set by President Donald Trump.

"If the TikTok ban does move forward, these platforms have a huge opportunity," said Ollie Forsyth, a former senior manager at investment firm Antler who now writes the newsletter New Economies. "Not only can they acquire huge volumes of creators, they can also acquire a huge number of new consumer users."

How social-commerce startups are seizing the moment

On top of investors pouring cash into social-commerce startups, startups themselves are spending now to capitalize on a moment of flux in the US market.

Flip pledged to offer equity grants to creators, for example, to encourage them to engage more on the platform.

Attracting new users in large numbers will be key to filling the TikTok void if a ban were to go into effect, said Matt Nichols, a partner at Commerce Ventures.

TikTok Shop succeeded because it had a unique combination of a large user base and an algorithm that could match those users with products they were likely to buy, Nichols said.

"Twenty years ago, retailers dictated what consumers purchased, and there was a long sales cycle," Nichols said. These days, there are "more quickly changing demand trends based on influencers, which has worked really well for TikTok Shop, but also hyper-fast retailers like Shein."

As an investor, he sees the best opportunities in startups working to help retailers and influencers succeed on other platforms that already have similarly big user bases, like Instagram and YouTube.

Former TikTok e-commerce leader Sandie Hawkins said in a recent interview with BI that the shopping experience TikTok made popular is likely to be imitated elsewhere.

She said social shopping creates a "community environment" where friends tell you what they think you should buy. "You're taking those recommendations right there, and you're closing the loop instead of having to send them to go someplace else," she said.

Here's a breakdown of some of the big deals announced in January in the social-commerce category:

• Livestream shopping app Whatnot closed a $265 million Series E round at a roughly $5 billion valuation. DST Global, Avra Capital, and Greycroft led the round, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Durable Capital Partners, among others.

  Whatnot's CEO Grant LaFontaine told BI the company planned to use its new funding to scale marketing, product, and engineering and expand into new markets like Australia.

• Gloss Ventures, an investment company focused on launching creator brands through social commerce and other channels, raised $15 million from private-equity firm Peterson Partners.

  Gloss Ventures' cofounder Quinn Roukema told BI the new funds would support its marketing efforts and plans to expand retail sales globally.

• Creator-affiliate platform ShopMy raised a $77.5 million Series B round led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Bain Capital Ventures. Menlo Ventures participated, as did previous investors Inspired Capital and AlleyCorp.

  Rein, ShopMy's CEO, told BI the company planned to use its funds to expand into new categories like hospitality and health and wellness, as well as to scale its performance marketing tech with new data analytics and measurement features.

• Influencer-marketing firm Later announced a $250 million acquisition of affiliate company Mavely. The deal was funded with a strategic investment from growth equity investor Summit Partners. CEO Scott Sutton told BI the purchase aimed to help Later offer clients a fuller picture of their marketing spend.
  
  He said Mavely has 120,000 creators driving sales of over $1 billion in merchandise value.
  
  "All of that data and all of that ability to track what's happening in the creator economy helps us to make money for creators, helps consumers discover the right types of products, and helps us deploy ad dollars for marketers in a really seamless way," Sutton said.

• Sandie Hawkins has joined Teikametrics as president, focusing on AI-driven e-commerce strategies.
• Hawkins previously led e-commerce at TikTok and saw how the platform changed consumer behavior.
• She predicts social commerce is here to stay even as TikTok's future is uncertain.

Sandie Hawkins led e-commerce at TikTok as the video platform was working to bring its shopping product to market. She saw firsthand how TikTok has dramatically changed consumer behavior and the implications it could have for the future of e-commerce.

Now, Hawkins has joined AI marketplace tech company Teikametrics, where she was recently hired as president.

The shopping experience TikTok Shop popularized will have a lasting effect on e-commerce, she said in a recent interview with Business Insider. Short-form videos like those on TikTok give shoppers details about items that photos and words just can't.

"People want to touch and feel, and you get that through hearing people talk about it and describe it and seeing it at the same time, versus writing about it and looking at a picture," she said.

It makes good business sense for social media platforms to build shopping marketplaces like TikTok did with Shop, as they allow users to go directly from inspiration to purchase without taking any intermediary steps.

"You have that community environment," she said. "You have all of your friends there with you and they're telling you what they think you should buy. You're taking those recommendations right there, and you're closing the loop instead of having to send them to go someplace else."

Hawkins predicts that consumers will continue to shop this way even as TikTok's future in the US remains uncertain. President Trump signed an executive order on January 20 that gave TikTok 75 more days to operate in the US. The app briefly went dark to comply with a law requiring ByteDance to either divest from TikTok or have it banned in the US.

Hawkins said that regardless of what happens to TikTok, more traditional marketplaces like Amazon or Walmart will start to bring elements of social commerce into their shopping experience.

While TikTok became more like Amazon, offering users an easy way to purchase without leaving the app, Amazon is simultaneously becoming more like TikTok. For example, Amazon listings now often display user-uploaded videos of what a product is like to use.

"They're moving toward the middle," Hawkins said.

'You need to either have a lot of people working on it, or you need to be using AI'

Hawkins is at the forefront of a different kind of disruptive technology in her new role at Teikametrics. The Boston-based startup uses AI to help brands optimize their performance on marketplaces. It focuses primarily on advertising spend but also has tools for optimizing pricing and inventory levels.

As president, Hawkins leads Teikametrics' go-to-market strategy. Part of her job is to help identify the platforms clients should be selling on, and what they need to do to succeed there.

Thriving in e-commerce today requires constantly changing things like product copy, imaging, and videos, she said.

"In order to do that, you need to either have a lot of people working on it, or you need to be using AI," she said. "Using AI really enables all brands to compete at the same level when it comes to being able to produce great content."

She used the example of a client for whom Teikametrics' AI-based tool had made around 75,000 changes related to keyword spending.

"I don't even know how many people you would need to make all of those changes," she said. "It just speaks to the power of using data and AI to help drive your business and results as quickly as possible."

• Shopify has laid off employees in its customer support organization, BI has learned.
• This division of the company has undergone multiple rounds of smaller, quiet layoffs since 2022.
• The e-commerce platform company continues to hire third-party customer support staff.

Shopify quietly laid off employees in its support division this week, five people familiar with the matter told Business Insider. It was not immediately clear how many employees lost their jobs, but one person estimated that it was at least a dozen.

Shopify's support teams troubleshoot issues for the millions of merchants who use the platform to sell products.

Employees who were affected by the job cuts lost access to company systems during or immediately after a brief meeting with HR, making it difficult for them to ascertain how many of their coworkers had also lost their jobs.

Shopify representatives did not immediately return a request for comment on the layoffs.

Shopify's support division has undergone many changes in recent years.

In early 2023, the company began "Code Yellow," a project aimed at improving customer service levels that leaders said had "deteriorated beyond acceptable ranges." As part of that project, it embraced using generative AI to handle some tasks that support employees had previously done, saying the technology had helped to "minimize toil, help us be more efficient and improve merchant experience." In 2024, company leaders told employees a reorganization of the division would be necessary to fix its ratio of managers to "crafters," which is Shopify's term for individual contributors.

Shopify has also continued to hire third-party vendors — some in other countries including the Philippines and some in Canada — to assist with customer-service tickets, which employees said has contributed to a decline in overall quality in response.

The support division has also seen a lot of turnover in its management ranks, with former leaders Glen Worthington, Clovis Cuqui, and Jen Bebb all departing Shopify in 2024.

Shopify conducted two rounds of mass layoffs in the years after a pandemic-era boom. In July 2022, it laid off 10% of its workforce, or roughly 1,000 employees, and in May 2023, it cut an additional 20% of staff while also selling off its logistics business.

Three people told BI that the company has quietly laid off workers several times since then, in a manner similar to this week's layoffs.

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Contact the reporter Jyoti Mann via email at [email protected] or via Signal at jyotimann.11. Reach out via a nonwork device.