• Postscript, a marketing startup, is dedicating $2.5 million to help brands affected by tariffs.
• Postscript is offering reduced rates and free AI tools to support affected brands.
• E-commerce software companies are closely watching how tariffs play out with their customers.

The marketing startup Postscript has heard a lot of concerns from customers about how tariffs have affected them.

Now, it's dedicating $2.5 million in an effort to help.

Postscript builds SMS marketing software for e-commerce brands and primarily targets small and midsize businesses on Shopify. Many of those brands import goods to be sold in North America.

Alex Beller, Postscript cofounder and president, told Business Insider that when the government announced the tariffs, Postscript started talking to customers and other e-commerce leaders to gauge how the industry would be affected. Some wouldn't be affected because they held inventory in the US, they had already diversified their supply chain, or they had a high-margin business to begin with.

However, others were concerned.

"What we eventually arrived at was that there's a lot of pain coming for the entire industry," Beller said. "And the expectation for these brands, the impacted ones, is that they're going to try to pull every lever they can to spread the pain out."

Some brands said they would raise prices on their products, while others said they would negotiate more favorable costs with their manufacturers. Some brands said they would thin out their teams or cut their marketing budgets, while others would look to renegotiate their terms with partners like Postscript.

The startup's tariff relief comes in a few different forms. It permanently lowered its rates for new and existing customers using its self-service platform. It's making its new AI tools free for the quarter. For new customers, it's charging carrier fees only for the quarter. It's offering thousands of dollars in cashback through its Fondue service. And, it introduced a new wind-down clause into its contracts in case tariffs hurt a business so much that it needed to go out of business.

All told, its commitments represent about $2.5 million in costs. Beller said that while Postscript will take a revenue hit from these offerings, it's worth it to build loyalty among its customers.

"We need to step up and proactively absorb our fair share," Beller said. "We feel like that's the customer-first thing to do."

Preparing for 'ripple effects' from tariffs

While brands take a direct hit from tariffs in the form of increased costs, e-commerce software companies are also closely monitoring the situation. If brands cut technology costs, software companies could suffer.

"The ripple effects are going to be there for a while," Beller said. "There's certainly concern about downstream impact to the broader e-commerce market."

Jeremiah Prummer, the CEO of e-commerce software companies KnoCommerce and Stamped, previously told BI that many merchants are cutting costs due to tariffs.

"Anybody who's building on the Shopify ecosystem is struggling with losing business because of tariffs — or if not losing business, actively cutting costs for our customers," Prummer said. "Ultimately, our customers are the ones that are affected by tariffs, and it's Shopify's customers, too."

For now, consumer spending doesn't seem to be suffering too drastically. Shopify itself struck an optimistic tone about the impact that tariffs would have on its business during its earnings call on May 8.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that China and the US agreed to reduce some tariffs for 90 days. During this time period, tariffs on Chinese goods would decrease from 145% to 30%.

Though the news likely gave many brands some relief, Postscript plans to continue with its plans because many are still navigating uncertainty in their supply chains and need short-term cash solutions, Beller said.

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• Trump's tariffs have made the jobs of global trade professionals even more complicated.
• It's an industry that was already known for its complexity.
• One advisor even started a support group for fellow "trade nerds" navigating the uncertainty.

Derek Lossing, a global supply chain and transportation advisor, was recently invited to speak at an investor conference for a large bank.

The invitation came at somewhat short notice: He agreed to the engagement on a Friday, and it took place virtually the following Tuesday.

But despite the bank only having the weekend to promote it, about 300 analysts showed up to hear him speak, a far cry from the usual dozen or so investors who typically show up to this kind of event, Lossing told Business Insider.

They were eager to gain any insight they could into how the latest executive orders on trade issues, such as tariffs and the end of de minimis, could impact businesses and the economy at large.

"I think people are just lacking information," he said. "Things are so fluid right now."

All of the uncertainty is making global trade experts very busy — and maybe a little stressed.

Cindy Allen is the CEO of consulting firm Trade Force Multiplier, which advises companies on global trade issues like tariffs and the end of de minimis. She has 35 years of experience in trade, mostly as a customs broker and freight forwarder. She also held leadership roles in data automation at US Customs and Border Protection and in compliance at FedEx Logistics.

Allen described the current trade environment as "unprecedented." The closest comparison she could think of was the COVID pandemic, but she said that was more a transportation and availability issue, while the problems created by tariffs are more financial in nature.

Working in this industry means having in-depth knowledge of complex regulations. Becoming a certified customs broker, for example, requires passing an extremely complicated test that most people fail.

"It was complicated already assessing duties, determining what regulations apply to products," Allen said. "But now with all of the additional tariffs, it has become extremely complex."

A support group for 'trade nerds'

Paul Diedrich is a director of customs brokerage and trade services at freight forwarder Ardent Global Logistics. As a trade compliance professional, his job is to help Ardent's customers navigate the latest customs regulations and ensure they are importing in a compliant manner.

He said that he worked 12-hour days, plus weekends, in the weeks following "Liberation Day," providing guidance and answering questions for small and medium-sized business owners who were worried about the impact the tariffs would have on their bottom line.

"It really wasn't the physical act of importing a shipment on behalf of one of my customers," Diedrich said. "It was just talking them down off ledges, in some cases."

"When you had a container that yesterday, or prior to all of these tariffs, would've been $3,000 to $5,000 in duty, and now it's $54,000 in duty — for a small company, that's a big hit, and not many companies can take that kind of a cash hit all at once," he said.

Diedrich decided to start a "Tariff Turmoil Support Group" for "trade nerds" navigating the uncertainty. He hosted the first meeting at the end of March and a second in April.

"More chaos yesterday with a softening of the language around the China tariffs putting more pressure on myself and my fellow brokers. I hope everyone repolished those crystal balls," Diedrich said in a LinkedIn post promoting the first meeting of the group. "We are judgement free, politics free, and open to any broker, importer or compliance professional beaten up over these last few weeks."

One area of frustration for people joining Diedrich's support group is how difficult it has become to interpret executive orders that often lack the specific details they need to do their jobs effectively.

"It's leading folks in my industry to come up with contradictory opinions" on things like what a duty on a particular import might be, and whether an exemption might be available, Diedrich said. "Honestly, you can look at both opinions and look at the order and say, 'Okay, I can see where you're coming from.'"

'I'm usually there with a glass of wine, waiting'

Keeping up with the latest executive orders and interpreting them for clients is a time-consuming part of the job.

"The first place you've got to check is the White House website for executive orders," Allen said. "5 p.m. on Friday seems to be the preferred time to drop major trade issues, so I'm usually there with a glass of wine, waiting."

She added that trade publications and associations, such as the National Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association, are invaluable sources of information.

But staying up to date also means monitoring social media, including Trump's posts — or "truths" — on Truth Social.

"The work to stay current right now is a very different type of work than what historically has made consulting firms good at what they do," Lossing said. "Historically, it was unbundling historical trade data, but now it's catching the luncheon interviews that the treasury secretary had in DC this afternoon and monitoring his comments."

That makes it difficult for trade experts to make firm recommendations as they have historically been able to. Lossing said he has instead presented his clients with data points and "scenario modeling" they can consider when making decisions.

"We could be 30 seconds away from the next 'truth,' and everything we thought to be true could be different with China," Lossing said. "Usually when you're helping clients with some sort of strategy, it doesn't change on a day-to-day basis."

However, being at the center of a national conversation could have some silver linings.

Allen said that for most of her 35-year career, most people, including her family, didn't really understand what she did for work. Trump's tariffs changed that.

"There's a greater appreciation for compliance professionals. The CEO now has their phone number and knows their name," Allen said. "Our industry has become much more valuable in the boardroom."

She said she hopes the attention will get more people interested in the field.

"Trade is only getting more complicated, and we need younger, newer people to come in with great ideas to help us modernize the process," she said.

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• Shopify launched new tools for duties calculation and cross-border trade.
• The tools include AI-driven tariff guidance and expanded duties-collection features.
• Cross-border commerce accounted for 15% of Shopify's sales during the quarter.

Shopify has been busy building tools to help its merchants through tariff uncertainty.

Executives addressed tariffs directly during the company's first-quarter earnings call Thursday, saying that it had launched a series of new solutions for calculating and collecting duties.

"We've shipped a lot, and we focused on areas that we can have a more immediate impact: cross-border trade, making it easier to buy local, duties calculations, and shipping," President Harley Finkelstein said during the call.

That includes a website it launched this week that provides AI-driven guidance on US tariff rates based on a product's description and its country of origin. The website cautions users to take it as guidance and to double-check rates with customs officials.

In February, Shopify made its duties-collection tool, previously exclusive to users of Advanced Shopify or Shopify Plus, available to all merchants.

Merchants using the tool can display and collect duties at the time of checkout. It also lowered the transaction fee for that tool to 0.5%, down from 0.85% for Shopify Payments users and 1.5% for merchants using other payment providers. Finkelstein said the number of merchants using the duties-collection tool doubled between January and the end of March.

Shopify also added a filter in the Shop app that allows shoppers to view products made in a particular country and to buy locally.

On the shipping front, it launched the ability for merchants to purchase prepaid shipping labels and send products to customers using delivery duty-paid shipping, which essentially means that merchants assume the costs of tariffs and taxes for customers.

It also started working with more third-party logistics providers on the Shopify Fulfillment Network app and added features to its managed markets product, which, through a partnership, allows merchants to designate Global-e as the merchant of record rather than the seller itself.

"Our obsession with unlocking every opportunity and filling every important gap in the system, to give our merchants the best chance of success, is one of our superpowers," Finkelstein said.

"We rolled out the Shop app filter in less than a week, and the duties calculation at checkout update over a weekend. Literally, the weekend after the tariff changes were announced, the team got to work, and by Sunday evening, we were testing it for production," he added.

Shopify CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said that cross-border commerce accounted for 15% of the company's gross merchandise volume in the quarter, similar to previous quarters. About half of that cross-border commerce involved trade into or out of the US.

He added that only about 1% of Shopify's overall GMV was for items from China that would qualify for the de minimis exemption.

"The recent expiration of the de minimis exemption for goods from China is not expected to have a meaningful impact on Shopify in the near term," he said. "That said, this expired less than a week ago, and we will continue to monitor its impact on our business."

Shopify reported 27% revenue growth and 23% GMV growth for the quarter.

"As the platform that powers global commerce, we're of course monitoring for potential slowdowns, but our data through April shows little evidence of that," Finkelstein said.

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• Onebeat raised $15 million to grow in the US.
• Onebeat uses AI to help retailers plan inventory efficiently.
• It aims to reduce the number of unsold products without going out of stock.

Onebeat, an Israel-based startup that uses AI to help retailers optimize their inventory, announced Tuesday it had raised $15 million in a funding round led by Schooner Capital.

Goldratt Consulting created Onebeat in 2014 when the firm sought ways to use software to improve its clients' supply chain operations. It officially spun out of Goldratt in 2018.

Onebeat aims to help retailers plan inventory efficiently so that large quantities of products do not go unsold.

The latest funding brings Onebeat's total raised to $30 million. It plans to use the new funds to officially expand to the US market.

"Retail is the most complicated business because you have to worry about product, about managing people, about marketing, about operations, supply chain," cofounder and CEO Yishai Ashlag said. "You don't really have a lot of room for mistakes."

Onebeat began with building advanced statistical models that eventually evolved into machine learning and AI.

"Our key algorithm where we use AI is to basically do noise and signal separation," Ashlag said. "Are we really seeing, in the small data of day to day, a trend that we should react to, or is it just a noise we should ignore?"

See the pitch deck Onebeat used to raise its latest round of funding:

Onebeat aims to help retailers optimize their inventory to match customer demand.

It was founded as a division of Goldratt Consulting in 2014.

It follows principles established by the firm's founder, Eliyahu Goldratt, who detailed them in his book "The Goal."

That includes the "theory of constraints," which emphasizes finding the factors that limit business growth.

The idea for Onebeat came from Goldratt's work with leading consumer brands.

Onebeat spun out of the consulting firm in 2018.

The retail world has grown increasingly complex in recent years, Ashlag said.

Many household names have gone bankrupt due to industry-wide disruption.

Ashlag said consumers want quick delivery and lots of choices. Retailers trying to meet their demands often end up creating waste.

With large store fleets and online shopping to consider, deciding how much product to make and where to place it can be too complex for humans to do efficiently.

Onebeat's algorithms learn customers' behavior and adapt accordingly.

Onebeat seeks to learn "the distribution curve for every store, for every product, in every category, and act on that to avoid shortages and to give better customer service," Ashlag said.

He said Onebeat can improve the proportion of inventory that retailers sell.

It can help make recommendations about replenishing store collections and special sales events.

Onebeat's customers include American Eagle and Crocs.

Ashlag says the company has helped retailers to increase sales while reducing inventory.

Onebeat considers Blue Yonder and Nextail among its competitors.

The company's leadership team has experience in retail and software.

"Inventory is a double-edged sword," Ashlag said. "If you find a way to manage it well, it can really uplift your business."

• Shopify made a change to its revenue share agreement for app developers.
• Developers lamented the change as it affects their budgets for next year.
• Shopify's App Store has more than 16,000 apps geared towards e-commerce merchants.

Shopify will sunset a revenue share exemption it has offered to upstart developers in its app ecosystem since 2021. App developers said the sudden change would force them to re-evaluate their budgets for 2026.

Previously, the first $1 million that app developers earned each year was exempt from Shopify's revenue share. After that initial $1 million, Shopify would take a 15% cut of developers' revenue.

But as of June 16, the $1 million threshold applies on a lifetime basis and does not reset each year. Any revenue earned before January 1, 2025, will not count toward the $1 million lifetime total. Shopify's take of developer revenue will remain at 15%.

Shopify announced the change Wednesday in an email to developers and in a post on its developer changelog.

"During the pandemic, we lowered our revshare to help small developers and introduced an exemption on the first $1M earned each year," it said in the announcement. "Our ecosystem is stronger than ever—merchants have more than 16,000 apps to choose from, and we paid out more than $1B to developers last year."

The company added that the additional revenue it will collect due to the change would go to "fund tools, infrastructure, and innovation that benefit developers at every stage." It listed a series of technical updates it has already made to improve the developer experience over the last two years.

A Shopify representative declined to comment further to Business Insider.

Andy Cloyd, cofounder and CEO of influencer marketing startup Superfiliate, told BI that the previous revenue share agreement meant that developers who were earning more than $1 million a year essentially had an extra $150,000 in their budgets. He said his company would have to adjust some of its plans for 2026.

"It'll have to be accounted for somewhere, so first things to be cut will be team travel, events, and sponsorships as it's the most discretionary of our spend," Cloyd said.

Superfiliate works primarily with Shopify merchants, but it has a new offering that allows it to work with Meta advertisers and TikTok Shop sellers as well.

"This change doesn't necessarily make us divert resources towards those ecosystems, but it definitely takes away flexibility in that 'exploratory' budget to go try different things," Cloyd said.

Developers posting on LinkedIn and X lamented the policy change, especially given that many merchants are looking to cut costs amid tariffs and ongoing economic uncertainty.

Jeremiah Prummer is the CEO of two software companies building in the Shopify ecosystem: KnoCommerce and Stamped. He told BI the change won't hurt his businesses too much, but the timing could have been better.

"Anybody who's building on the Shopify ecosystem is struggling with losing business because of tariffs — or if not losing business, actively cutting costs for our customers," Prummer said. "Ultimately, our customers are the ones that are affected by tariffs, and it's Shopify's customers too."

It's unclear whether developers will have to raise the prices of their apps and services to account for the change. However, most said they would continue to build for the Shopify platform.

"When you're in the position Shopify is in, there's a lot of leeway because they've built so much value in this ecosystem over time that they can make moves like this and you still want to be a part of it," Prummer said.

Shopify's App Store is populated with thousands of apps helping merchants with functions like marketing, order fulfillment, customer support, and more. The Canadian e-commerce giant has made itself an appealing platform for developers to build on.

Its revenue share is relatively low compared to other platforms like Apple, which charges developers 15-30% of revenue. Shopify has even invested in many leading apps in its App Store. The number of Shopify-focused apps grew enormously as e-commerce sales exploded during the pandemic.

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• Some of Amazon's most popular products have gotten more expensive in recent weeks.
• SmartScout found that prices went up by 29% on average.
• Several well-known brands have raised prices on their products.

Prices are going up on Amazon.

Data from SmartScout, an e-commerce analytics company, shows that Amazon sellers have raised prices on some of the marketplace's most popular products to record highs.

Scott Needham, SmartScout's founder and CEO, said his company identified nearly 900 products on Amazon that are listed at their highest prices ever. All the products are top items on Amazon and sell at least 1,000 units monthly. SmartScout analyzed over 100,000 listings to arrive at the more than 800 listings that had raised prices.

The average increase in the listings with higher prices was 29%, SmartScout found. One-quarter of the sellers raising prices are in China.

The price changes went into effect in the two weeks immediately following President Donald Trump's announcement of tariffs on April 2, which he called "Liberation Day." While Trump put a 90-day pause on most tariffs, those on goods from China have gone into effect, leading many e-commerce sellers to explore raising prices or diversifying their supply chains.

Sellers have the discretion to determine their own prices on Amazon, but those who do raise their prices risk losing the coveted "buy box." "Winning" the buy box is crucial because it means your listing is the default purchase option and has the "add to cart" button on it, which increases your chances of beating competing listings to a sale.

The buy box algorithm compares listed prices on Amazon with those on the same product at competitors, incentivizing sellers to always have their lowest price on Amazon.

Popular snacks, kids toys, home appliances, and clothing are among the Amazon listings with higher prices than before, SmartScout found. Several are well-known brands, like the US home goods brand Zulay Kitchen and the Chinese electronics accessories brand Anker, which each have four products on SmartScout's list. The Hong Kong smart device brand Govee raised prices on 11 of its best-selling items, the data shows.

Even some items sold by Amazon Basics — Amazon's private label — have gotten more expensive by a few dollars and cents, including batteries, USB cables, and melatonin gummies.

An Amazon representative disputed SmartScout's findings, saying it examined only a "tiny fraction of items in our store."

"We have not seen the average selling prices of products change up or down appreciably outside of typical fluctuations across the hundreds of millions of items on Amazon," the spokesperson said.

The Amazon spokesperson added that fewer than 1% of items studied saw an increase in price.

Anker and Govee did not immediately return requests for comment.

Tariffs are forcing businesses to make 'massive pivots'

Zulay Kitchen's founder and CEO, Aaron Cordovez, told Business Insider the Florida-based brand was raising prices because it didn't believe the tariff situation would be resolved soon.

"Right now, the vast majority of our products are coming out of China, and we believe it will take about six months to get a good amount coming from other countries," Cordovez said in an email. "We need to not blow through our stock while we figure out how to bring in product from elsewhere."

Dozens of Amazon sellers signed a petition earlier this month asking the company to consider revisiting its buy box policies amid the turmoil created by tariffs.

"Businesses need to react quickly to the tariffs, which have been changing daily, and right now they can't pivot fast enough due to the buy box suppressions from price increases," David Cassarino, the director of Amazon marketing at the digital growth firm National Positions, told BI.

He said he signed the petition because he believed his clients needed greater flexibility to raise prices without affecting their buy box position.

Cordovez said it would take about a year to solve most of the brand's supply chain problems.

"Our business does not work with the tariffs unless we make massive pivots, so that's what we're doing, and it includes price increases," he said.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in an interview on CNBC that he expected sellers would have to pass on the extra cost of tariffs to customers.

"I understand why. I mean, depending on which country you're in, you don't have 50% extra margin that you can play with," he said.

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• The de minimis tax loophole is expected to close on May 2.
• Brands are exploring ways they can defer their duty payments.
• That could include using bonded warehouses or foreign trade zones.

The end is near for de minimis.

Though President Donald Trump paused most of his announced tariffs for 90 days, de minimis shipping of China-made goods will come to an end much sooner.

The shipments, part of Section 321 of US customs law, allow for duty-free import of goods valued at less than $800. But as of May 2, de minimis shipments of China-made goods will no longer be allowed.

Moving manufacturing to the US could be expensive and time-consuming, so many brands are looking for ways to have some control over when they pay duties.

"The name of the game is duty deferral now if your goods are made in China," Alex Yancher, the CEO of Passport Global, a startup that helps brands sell globally, told Business Insider.

Here are some strategies importers are exploring as they prepare for the end of de minimis and weather the storm of tariffs.

Storing inventory in a bonded warehouse

Bonded warehouses are federally licensed facilities that allow retailers to store goods without paying duty for up to five years. Rather than pay tariffs on an entire container of products, importers using this type of storage could instead fulfill smaller amounts of inventory and thus distribute their tax payments over a broader range of time.

Bloomberg reported that demand for bonded warehouses soared in the weeks after Trump's "Liberation Day" announcement.

Third-party logistics provider ShipMonk is one company trying to meet customer demand for this type of storage. It's converting parts of facilities in Texas, Kentucky, Nevada, and Canada into bonded warehousing space.

"The main thing here is the cashflow benefit, especially when brands are paying this exorbitant rate for duties and tariffs now," ShipMonk's president, Kevin Sides, told BI.

Shipping into a foreign trade zone

Similar to bonded warehouses, foreign trade zones allow importers to temporarily defer tariff payments. Both options also allow merchants to hold inventory in the US while waiting to see what happens next with tariffs.

Jeffrey Tafel, president of the National Association of Foreign-Trade Zones, told the FT that interest in foreign trade zones is two to four times higher since Trump took office this year.

Fulfilling orders closer to where they're manufactured

Though the end of de minimis means low-value goods won't be duty-free as of May 2, shipping orders from near where they are manufactured can still provide some advantages.

Portless is a startup that fulfills brands' orders in China and then ships them on planes directly to customers. Founder and CEO Izzy Rosenzweig describes it as a "balance sheet strategy" suited to smaller brands that don't have lots of cash on hand to pay tariffs.

"You only get taxed once a good enters the country. Portless is near the factory, so your goods have never entered the country," Rosenzweig said. "Don't bring it into the country unless you need to, and then do parcel by parcel shipments into the country."

Fulfilling orders from a neighboring country

Similarly, brands are exploring nearshoring, or fulfilling orders from Canada or Mexico.

"Nearshoring helps defer US duties because you only import what you sell into the US and pay duties at that point vs. importing pallets and paying the duties all at once upon import," Yancher said.

Diversifying suppliers and materials

Trade experts also recommend that brands research their supply chain to see whether they can save on tariffs by manufacturing in another country.

They could also do some tariff engineering, or change a product's design enough that it could be classified under a different category with lower tariffs. It's a strategy that has been used by Columbia Sportswear and Converse sneakers over the years.

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• Robots that look and move like humans are getting a lot of buzz.
• Companies, including Amazon and GXO, are already testing humanoid robots in their warehouses.
• But humanoids are expensive and complex, and the tech used to power them is still nascent.

Tech companies and investors are pouring billions of dollars into a future in which human-like robots work alongside people in warehouses, hospitals, restaurants, and homes. The goal is that humanoid robots that can carry objects and walk on two feet could help to fill labor shortages across industries and take on tasks that might be harmful to humans.

While the idea of having a robot do chores around the house might sound appealing, humanoids most often start their "careers" in warehouses and manufacturing facilities.

That's because humanoids — and robots in general — tend to work best in structured environments, CB Insights' senior lead analyst Benjamin Lawrence told Business Insider.

"A lot of factories and warehouses are very similar, so you can set up replicating tasks much more easily," he said.

"When you think of a home, for example, you need to make sure that the humanoid is safe with grandma, with the kids, with the pets, that it doesn't step on the dog's tail. You need to make sure that the humanoid is aware that there's a candle burning on that table and doesn't accidentally knock it over and cause a house fire."

Some experts are skeptical about a future filled with humanoid robots. They're expensive and complex to manufacture, and outside a handful of highly publicized tests, they're still largely unproven.

But investor interest is taking off, with companies making humanoid robots raising a collective $1.2 billion in venture funding in 2024, according to CB Insights. The sector is on track to more than double funding to $3 billion this year. Agility Robotics is raising $400 million at a $1.75 billion valuation, The Information reported earlier this month. Apptronik, which makes the Apollo humanoid robot, announced a $350 million Series A funding round in February.

Big Tech companies are also betting big on humanoids — some by supplying their foundational models to robotics manufacturers, like Google DeepMind is doing with Apptronik, and others by making both the models and the hardware themselves, like Tesla is with its Optimus robot. Big Tech views humanoids as the natural next step in AI, as the industry's interest has gone from generative AI to agentic AI and then on to physical AI. Advances in natural language processing have also made training robots simpler.

"The ChatGPT moment for general robotics is just around the corner," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during his keynote speech at CES in January.

'We're not 10 years away, that's for sure'

Many of the early users of humanoids are auto manufacturers. There's already quite a bit of automation in car plants, so moving on to humanoids is a natural progression, Lawrence said.

Ford was Agility's first customer, buying the first two Digit robots in 2020. The two companies had previously partnered on a last-mile delivery project. Elon Musk has said Tesla will have "genuinely useful humanoid robots in low production for Tesla internal use" this year and available to other companies at a price tag of $20,000 to $30,000 in 2026. BMW piloted humanoid robots made by Figure, using them to insert sheet metal parts into a car's chassis. And, Hyundai acquired Boston Dynamics, a leader in humanoid robotics, from Softbank for $1.1 billion in 2021.

Retailers are also testing humanoids in their warehouses. Amazon is testing Digit, the humanoid robot made by Agility, in addition to the robots it manufactures in-house. Logistics giant GXO is also testing Digit and humanoids from Apptronik and Reflex Robotics.

"We are going really broad and aggressive on the category," Adrian Stoch, GXO's chief automation officer Adrian Stoch told BI in a recent interview. "It's because of where we see this going."

Just how close humanoid coworkers are to becoming a reality in warehouses is still uncertain.

There are a few roadblocks. The first is price, with a single humanoid robot costing several tens of thousands of dollars (though several manufacturers in China, including Unitree, have recently revealed models at a significantly lower price point).

The second potential roadblock is the technology itself.

"You need to have humanoids that are highly adaptable to every different warehouse, to a range of language commands, and to be able to infer those commands and work within the existing structure," Lawrence said. "It's just very difficult to do that."

The current tests are relatively small. For example, GXO has more than 1,000 warehouses and employs more than 150,000 people, yet it has just two Digit units moving heavy boxes to a conveyor belt in one facility.

"We're not at wide-scale deployment and commercial viability yet, but we're not 10 years away, that's for sure," Stoch said.

When is the human form right for the job?

There's also the question of whether robots that can walk on two feet and manipulate objects with two hands are ideal for completing tasks.

Robotic arms that can pick up and place items are now common in warehouses. There are also automated guided vehicles, or AGVs, that transport items around warehouses using predefined routes on a line or wire, and autonomous mobile robots, or AMRs, that can get around on their own. Boston Dynamics has also made a robotic dog that can do things like read meters and detect leaks.

"There are very few use cases where the best robotic form is something that looks like you," Forrester analyst Paul Miller said.

He added that the work a human does could likely best be replicated with a combination of technologies, not just a robot that happens to have a similar look to a human.

"A human worker in their job does a lot of different tasks. Some of those tasks are best performed by a human being. Some tasks are best performed by software," Miller said. "Some of those tasks are best performed by a physical automation, some kind of robot."

"It's about working out how you break those tasks up."

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• Trump's trade war has increased demand for robotics and automation.
• Robots-as-a-service company Formic said its customers have stepped up their use of robots this year.
• Automation can help companies to save money amid uncertainty.

Automation company Formic said that its customers stepped up their robot usage this year as tariff announcements sent global supply chains into chaos.

Formic automates packing and palletizing — or placing packages on a pallet — for automotive, industrial, food, beverage, and consumer packaged goods companies. It operates on a "robots-as-a-service" model, meaning that customers lease Formic's robots and pay a monthly rate based on how much they use them. Its robots are deployed in more than 100 factories in the US and have stacked and packed more than 1.2 billion products.

Between January and February, Formic's customers increased their robot usage by more than 17% overall, Chief Marketing Officer Shawn Fitzgerald told Business Insider. Its food and beverage customers stepped up their usage by more than 13%. He said the usage numbers seemed particularly notable given that February has fewer business days than the other months of the year.

It's likely that brands were using robots to get ahead of any tariff-related price increases.

President Donald Trump made his first in a series of tariff announcements on February 1, placing tariffs on goods from China, Canada, and Mexico, and closing the de minimis tax loophole.

"This data suggests everyone sat down with each other and said, let's step on the gas as much as we can in February, and let's make as much as we possibly can at the price points we are at right now," Fitzgerald said.

Formic customers' robot usage dipped in March, but the numbers are showing signs of a rebound so far in April, the company said. This month has seen the return of global trade chaos as Trump announced a large set of tariffs on April 2 — which he called "Liberation Day" — then later paused those tariffs except for those on goods from China.

Fitzgerald said that working with Formic helps companies to get more predictability in their costs amid uncertainty.

"If you do unfortunately have to go to overtime, robots love first, second, and third shift and overtime all the same. They do not care," he said.

Using automation to 'fill in some of the gaps'

Formic's customers include Rumiano Cheese Company, a cheese-making and packaging company based in Willows, a small town in the Sacramento Valley of California. Automation is top of mind for the 106-year-old company — even more so as tariffs have posed a threat to their profits this year. Rumiano imports cheeses from Italy and exports products to Mexico, China, and the Dominican Republic through a third party.

Rumiano is installing a Formic robot that can pick up 30-pound boxes of cheese and move them from the production line to pallets to be shipped out to customers. But Formic's robots are just one of several automation solutions Rumiano has explored. It also uses a machine that puts stacks of cheese in the proper place so they can be packaged.

"We've had more AI and robotics conversations in the last two months than we've probably had in the year prior," said Patrick Henson, the vice president of operations at Rumiano.

Employees who previously stacked cheese by hand have been reassigned to other tasks in the facility.

Working with robotics and data partners is key for the small, family-owned company.

"We don't have teams of data scientists or anything like that," David Wolper, director of planning at Rumiano, said. "We are looking to partners to help us grow with AI tools to help us really dig into data so that we can make sure we're spending money on the right things, we're producing the right products, we're doing everything as efficiently as we can to help save costs."

Tariffs have created obvious challenges for brands, but supply chain optimization has been a hot topic for several years. It's an area where robots and software can help, Forrester analyst Paul Miller told BI.

"Since Covid there has been this broad idea about shortening supply chains, improving resilience, improving adaptability, and part of that is bringing manufacturing capacity closer to the customer," Miller said. "If you're trying to bring that manufacturing capacity to California or Germany or Japan, the people are not cheap. You need to use automation to fill in some of the gaps."

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick alluded to this idea in several TV appearances he made after Trump announced his tariff plans in April.

On CNBC, he said US factories are "going to see the greatest surge in training for what we call tradecraft — teaching people how to be robotics, mechanics, engineers and electricians for high tech factories."

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• Some Amazon sellers are petitioning for the retail giant to change its buy box policies.
• Tariffs, especially on products from China, will force brands to raise prices.
• Amazon's buy box increases sales but is only added to items priced lower than competitors.

Dozens of Amazon sellers have signed a petition asking the e-commerce giant to reconsider its policies regarding its buy box, the entrepreneur who created the petition said.

The petition, which was written and circulated by e-commerce entrepreneur Brandon Fishman on Tuesday, says that since tariffs have forced many brands to consider raising their prices, they're finding themselves in a tricky situation regarding their Amazon product listings.

It's all about the buy box, long a source of stress for Amazon sellers.

"Winning" the buy box is key because it means your listing is the default purchase option and has the "Add to Cart" button on it, increasing the odds of beating competing listings to a sale.

Amazon uses a complex algorithm to determine which products win the buy box. As part of that process, it compares listed prices on Amazon to those on the same product at competitors, incentivizing sellers to always have the lowest price on Amazon.

Fishman said the fierce competition to have the lowest price on Amazon and, therefore, win the buy box means that sellers don't have as much control over their pricing as they would like.

This is especially relevant as businesses look to raise prices to weather the impact of tariffs. Since many brands also sell their products at major retailers, like Walmart and Target, that may require more notice of planned price changes in stores. Sellers can't quickly raise their prices on Amazon without risking losing the buy box, Fishman said.

"Amazon needs to give brands their own pricing power immediately," the petition reads.

Amazon representatives declined to comment on the petition but pointed to a 2020 blog post that explains how Amazon chooses which seller gets chosen for the buy box when multiple sellers are selling the same product.

"We don't want to disappoint customers, so if we or our independent sellers don't have a good offer that we're confident will preserve customer trust in our store, we won't feature an offer at all. We'd rather the customer not buy that product from Amazon than have a poor shopping experience and lose trust in Amazon," it reads.

"Of course, even when we choose not to feature a particular offer, customers can still view all of the available non-featured offers for that product."

Don't sell rather than sell at a loss

Fishman is the CEO of VitaCup, a vitamin-infused coffee and tea brand, and an Amazon marketing agency called Prime Team Agency. He told BI his clients have taken a variety of approaches in response to tariffs.

"Most people I know are just literally removing the product and not selling it because they can't sell it at a loss," he said. "People are just not sending in shipments to see what happens here the next few weeks."

BI reported earlier this month that Amazon employees, suppliers, and sellers were scrambling for solutions as they received little guidance from the company regarding how best to respond to the turmoil caused by Trump's tariffs.

David Cassarino is the director of Amazon marketing at digital growth firm National Positions. He said he signed Fishman's petition because it would be in his clients' best interest for Amazon to allow its sellers to raise prices without risking losing the buy box.

"Businesses need to react quickly to the tariffs, which have been changing daily, and right now they can't pivot fast enough due to the buy box suppressions from price increases," Cassarino said.

The global trade situation continues to evolve rapidly. On Wednesday, Trump said he would pause most of his planned tariffs and lower reciprocal tariffs to 10% for 90 days, except those on goods from China, which he raised to 125%. That means Amazon sellers are still feeling the heat from tariffs — A Jungle Scout survey from 2024 found that more than 70% of Amazon sellers source their products from China.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in an interview on CNBC Thursday morning he expected sellers would have to pass on the extra cost of tariffs to customers.

"I understand why, I mean, depending on which country you're in, you don't have 50% extra margin that you can play with," he said.

Bloomberg reported Wednesday that Amazon had canceled orders for products made by vendors in China and several other Asian countries.

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• GXO is testing humanoid robots from three different firms.
• Humanoids from Agility Robotics, Reflex Robotics, and Apptronik are learning specific tasks.
• There's lots of hype around humanoids, though there are some obstacles to their being used at scale.

GXO is putting humanoids to work.

The e-commerce logistics giant is testing humanlike robots made by three different robotics firms as it explores ways to bring the most cutting-edge tech to the warehouses it operates for its customers.

Adrian Stoch, GXO's chief automation officer, told Business Insider that he's optimistic about humanoids because they're the first kinds of robots that could theoretically complete multiple tasks in a warehouse, thanks to increasingly complex AI models.

They're not quite there yet. For now, the humanoids that GXO is piloting focus on completing one task each.

"We are going really broad and aggressive on the category," Stoch said. "It's because of where we see this going."

Digit, a humanoid robot made by Agility Robotics, is working at a GXO-operated Spanx warehouse in Atlanta, moving heavy containers from a 6 River Systems robot to a conveyor belt.

GXO is also testing Apptronik's Apollo humanoid with an undisclosed technology customer and Reflex Robotics' humanoid with a sports apparel customer. Reflex's humanoid brings empty corrugated cardboard from a robot made by Locus Robotics to a machine to be recycled. GXO is still in discussion about how to best put Apollo to use for the technology customer that has signed on to the pilot.

The company is also in conversation with four other vendors making humanoid robots, Stoch said.

"It's a risk-free proposition for them, and they're able to bring in their technology, implement it outside of the normal core process, and we provide feedback from our operators and my team," Stoch said. "Then we partner with the vendors to go through improvements."

GXO views its warehouses as a "lab environment" where it can provide direct feedback to robotics firms about how its technology functions in a real-world environment, Stoch said. While GXO has already partnered with other vendors on products like robotic arms and autonomous mobile robots, working with humanoids is a major part of this incubator program. It's seeing the most progress with the robot Digit so far.

GXO's humanoid pilot is still small, especially when considering the larger context of its business. GXO has more than 1,000 warehouses and employs more than 150,000 people, yet it has just two units of Digit working in one facility.

Before more humanoids are deployed, the robots' dexterity and ability to learn multiple tasks through AI need to be improved, Stoch said. Humanoids are also not yet at a point where they can be manufactured efficiently at scale.

"We're not at wide-scale deployment and commercial viability yet, but we're not 10 years away, that's for sure," he said.

Big Tech companies like Meta and Tesla have also invested in developing humanoids as AI has grown more sophisticated. These companies view humanoids as the next frontier of physical AI and believe that they will eventually perform many tasks that humans do.

There are plenty of skeptics of humanoids as well. Forrester analyst Paul Miller predicted at the end of 2024 that fewer than 5% of the robots entering workplaces this year will be able to walk.

"The big open question is: when is a humanoid form the right one?" Miller told BI. "A human worker in their job does a lot of different tasks. Some of those tasks are best performed by a human being. Some of those tasks are possibly best performed by software. Some of those tasks are best performed by a physical automation, some kind of robot.

"It's about working out how you break those tasks up."

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• LTV.ai raised a $5.2 million Series A for its AI-driven email and text messaging product.
• The startup aims to replace mass emails with individualized post-purchase messages for retail.
• See the pitch deck it used to raise its Series A.

LTV.ai, a startup that uses AI to send personalized emails and texts for retail brands, has raised a $5.2 million Series A led by Bling Capital, Protagonist, and CSC Generation CEO Justin Yoshimura.

The startup aims to send individualized marketing messages to customers after they purchase a product, rather than the mass emails consumers usually get in their inboxes.

Asad Rehman, LTV.ai cofounder and head of growth, used the example of a brand selling a sweater to a New York-based customer who had previously purchased a pair of jeans.

"We would reach out to you and say, 'How are you liking the jeans you picked up last summer? We just released this new sweater, which would go really well with your jeans because it's gonna snow in New York next week,'" Rehman told Business Insider.

To perform these tasks, the startup uses a variety of large language models, including models from Perplexity, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google.

"We intentionally built our platform to be LLM-agnostic, enabling us to leverage the best models for specific functions across our stack," Kevin Kai, cofounder and head of AI, said. "As new capabilities are released, we adopt them immediately—giving our clients real-time access to the most advanced language models available."

Its customers include Fabletics, Cuyana, Backcountry, and Sur La Table.

Rehman and Kai cofounded the company that would become LTV.ai in 2023. Previously known as ShopToken, it built blockchain-based loyalty programs. They pivoted in February 2024 when they saw the greatest demand was for its AI email product.

The company plans to use its latest funding to hire engineers, speed up its infrastructure, and host more events for the broader e-commerce industry.

Check out the pitch deck that LTV.ai used to raise its Series A:

• Temu is hiring from Amazon and Walmart to recruit US sellers.
• Temu continues to hire business development managers to entice brands to sign up.
• The company aims to expand its US seller base as it faces the potential end of de minimis shipping.

Temu has been hiring employees from e-commerce incumbents like Amazon and Walmart as it looks to recruit US sellers.

The Chinese e-commerce company has said it's been making a big push to hire business development managers. At Temu, working in business development involves bringing new brands and manufacturers onto its site and then helping them develop selling strategies, according to LinkedIn postings. Managers pitch potential vendors on the advantages of selling on Temu, and once they've been onboarded, they guide them in product planning, marketing, and other operations.

Many of these new hires have joined Temu in the last six months and previously held similar positions at more established e-commerce companies. At least a dozen have previously worked at Amazon, according to Business Insider's analysis of LinkedIn profiles. Temu has also hired people from Walmart, which has a third-party online marketplace, and TikTok, which has quickly built up a base of sellers with its e-commerce offering, Shop.

"We have been expanding our team to help bring more US sellers onto the platform, giving them more choice and a low-cost way to grow their businesses," a Temu spokesperson said. "To support this, we have hired experienced people to help expand opportunities for local sellers and strengthen local sales."

Temu's business development managers have also attended e-commerce conferences, including several that are popular with Amazon sellers, like the Prosper Show. In their pitches to potential vendors, they tend to emphasize Temu's rapid growth and huge assortment of products.

Temu expands in the US

When Temu first launched, it operated using a managed marketplace model in which manufacturers consolidated their inventory into warehouses in China and then shipped to consumers across borders.

Temu still fulfills many of its orders that way, though it officially opened its marketplace to US sellers in March 2024 and has been growing its base of local sellers since then. This newer model allows sellers with US warehouses to handle fulfillment and logistics themselves.

It also helps Temu to hedge against changes to the de minimis provision, a part of US customs law that allows shippers to avoid paying duty on shipments going directly to customers and valued at less than $800. De minimis helps retailers like Temu and Shein keep costs low, though critics say the provision hurts American manufacturers and allows for the import of illicit goods like fentanyl.

The Trump administration has said it would bring an end to de minimis once customs officials establish a new process for collecting duty on packages sent using the provision.

Rick Watson, the CEO and founder of RMW Commerce Consulting, said since the US is Temu's largest market, there's "a lot of risk if seller recruitment efforts do not succeed here."

"It takes experience to understand how and where to recruit sellers, so it's very common for these types to go from one company to another," he said.

Besides in the US, Temu is hiring business development managers in Europe, Canada, and the UK.

Temu's parent company PDD Holdings, which also operates Pinduoduo in China, reported 24% revenue growth for the fourth quarter of 2024 on Thursday.

During the earnings call, co-CEO Lei Chen referred to "changes in the external environment" that could pose "challenges to our global business," but did not specify what those changes were. He said the company would "continue to explore new business models" and "experiment with innovative localized supply chain solutions."

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• A trifecta of economics, pandemic-era realities, and political pressure is changing tech culture.
• From Big Tech to Silicon Valley startups, companies are pushing to "do more with less."
• Leaders aren't shy about wielding their power and aligning around a hard-driving strategy.

For years, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke enjoyed a reputation for growing the $125 billion e-commerce company without working the grueling hours expected of startup founders.

"My job is incredible, but it's also just a job. Family and personal health rank higher in my priority list," he wrote in a now-deleted post on X, then Twitter, shortly before the pandemic, as reported by Business Insider at the time. "The only times I worked more than 40 hours in a week was when I had the burning desire to do so."

This year, even Lütke appeared to change his tune.

"I'm at home for dinner but I work at least 10 or so hours a day and a lot of the weekend," Lütke wrote on X. He was responding to a user who called him a "counter-example" to a meme suggesting you can't have work-life balance and a breakthrough startup. "I don't want people to get misguided by this meme."

Across tech, the tables have turned for employees as performance pressure and proclamations of "efficiency" and "intensity" replace perks and pampering. Sweeping layoffs have become the norm in an industry that, in recent memory, enjoyed job security. The pressure to dominate in AI has created intense competition, as companies use the technology to do more with fewer workers. Already hard-driving workplaces have become even harder.

While the situation for tech employees has been changing since the pandemic boom ended in 2022, more recent developments include a decidedly different tone from executives. Now, companies aren't just making these changes; they want to be seen making them.

Meta earlier this year said it was cutting 4,000 employees deemed low performers as CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the "culturally neutered" corporate world had gotten away from "masculine energy." Amazon insisted that employees return to the workplace every weekday, a policy some employees say is stricter than before the pandemic.

Other companies have cracked down, too. Microsoft, which was once referred to as a "country club" for its relatively lax culture, cut 2,000 employees as it overhauled its review process to eliminate underperformers more quickly.

Google, which practically invented tech perks like free lunch, started an "efficiency drive." Its cofounder Sergey Brin, who had stepped away from leading Google but now often shows up to work on the company's Gemini AI models, recently recommended that employees working on its Gemini tools should work 60 hours a week and go into the office "at least every weekday." Wall Street has rewarded this rigor, as stock prices of Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google's parent, Alphabet, have surged since 2022.

Startups also see a trickle-down effect from Big Tech companies' pressures. Krish Ramadurai, a partner at AIX Ventures, said he had noticed a "pronounced shift" toward leaner teams and rigorous performance standards at startups.

Between performance-based cuts, return-to-office mandates, and the stripping of workplace perks, it's clear not only that the tech industry is done coddling employees, but that companies want to send the message those days are over. BI interviewed employees from tech giants, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta, as well as various tech startups, about the changes. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity since they're not authorized to talk to the press, though their identities are known to BI.

Meta, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon did not comment. Shopify did not respond to a request for comment.

From comfy to collapsed

For years, fierce competition for tech workers meant companies spoiled employees with astonishing salaries and swanky perks, such as in-office massages and free food cooked by fancy chefs.

By 2022, tech companies seemingly couldn't throw enough money at workers. Early that year, Amazon more than doubled its maximum base salary, and Microsoft gave across-the-board raises to employees up to a certain level of seniority to dissuade them from leaving for competitors.

As the pandemic boom ended, tech stocks plummeted, and interest rates increased through 2022. This prompted an efficiency drive by many companies as investors demanded profitability over growth at all costs.

Also that year, companies watched the billionaire Elon Musk's handling of the Twitter acquisition, in which he cut thousands of employees, plus perks like free lunches, and demanded a commitment to a new "extremely hardcore" vision and "long hours at a high intensity." At one point, Twitter workers were begging on Slack for toilet paper and clean bathrooms amid Musk's drastic cost-cutting.

As of late last year, Fidelity valued X at only about 20% of the $44 billion that Musk bought it for in 2022. Still, his approach may have expanded what the tech industry thought possible in terms of workforce and cost cutting.

"People paid attention because the prevailing wisdom was you couldn't take out that much of an engineering organization and put that much instability on it and not have it fall over," Brad Porter, the founder and CEO of Cobot, told BI. "It did come close to falling. He pushed right to the edge of it actually falling over, but it didn't fall over."

'Do more with less'

By the end of 2022 and in early 2023, tech giants had conducted unprecedented rounds of layoffs. Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft collectively laid off more than 60,000 employees during that time.

Layoffs have remained at a steady drip across the industry since. Such cuts have become so frequent at Google, for example, that employees have taken to crowdsourcing information on layoffs in an internal Google Doc.

Employees told BI about the pressure across the industry to "do more with less." "There's lots of uncertainty," one longtime Amazon employee said, "and lots of pressure to perform the jobs of multiple people at the mercy of ruthless middle management."

Tech companies are also culling middle management layers. Amazon in September announced a plan to increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by 15% by the end of this month. In December, CEO Sundar Pichai told his staff that Google had cut vice president and manager roles by 10% as part of its efficiency drive. Microsoft also monitors what it calls "span of control," tracking the number of reports per manager.

Performance pressures

Amid the cuts, employees across the industry say companies are dialing up the performance demands.

Meta told its staff in January that it would eliminate roughly 5% of its workforce, or about 4,000 employees, to "raise the bar on performance management," as Zuckerberg wrote in an internal memo.

Google also increased pressure on employees. Perhaps most telling was Pichai's December comments attempting to clarify what "Googleyness" means for a modern Google. Once a squishy and vague philosophy for the search giant's corporate culture, Pichai said he believed it now meant, among other things, being "mission first."

"There is more pressure for individuals to be better in their roles, and there is much more aggressive performance management happening these days," a longtime Google manager said.

"We're being asked to do more for less," said another current longtime Google employee.

That same Google employee said that Silicon Valley had been moving toward more ruthless, efficient workplaces for a while — and that the current political climate "gives them the green light to do it openly." Google has been working to become more efficient since its chief investment officer Ruth Porat joined the company as CFO from Morgan Stanley in 2015, "but now the masks are off," the person said.

Microsoft was once referred to as the tech industry's "country club," meaning a place employees would go after they were done working hard in their careers and wanted to coast before retirement. A change this year shows how far Microsoft has shifted when it fired 2,000 employees deemed low performers without severance and ended their health benefits the same day. This kind of performance-based mass cut showed a shift for the tech giant.

One longtime Microsoft senior-level employee said they felt that the "culture shifts toward firmer performance expectations" at peer tech companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon made it more acceptable for Microsoft to do the same.

At TikTok, the pressure to perform jumped last year after the company directed managers to deliver more low scores in performance reviews, leading to PIPs and eventual exits. At the same time, six current and former employees told BI their goals had become much harder to hit. One staffer called the goals "unattainable."

The company has also recently heightened RTO requirements for some teams. In February, it told its US e-commerce workers that in addition to being in the office five days a week, they would physically need to be in the building for eight hours a day. Ten current and former workers told BI that burnout had become common, leading to some going on mental health leave to get a break. TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.

"You feel like if you're not hitting a target, even if it's a moving target, you're in trouble," a former staffer who went on leave for mental health reasons told BI. "For me, it was just feeling like a failure, like I couldn't do anything right."

It's gotten hardcore in the 'valley of death'

The increasing pivot to performance has even made it to already hard-charging startups.

Startups have a time-honored tradition of an always-on, work-first lifestyle. Early employees are expected to put in grueling hours of coding and customer support during this critical phase, known as the "valley of death," when startups are flush with initial funding but not yet profitable.

The free-money era tested this tradition of hustle and thriftiness. Investors heaped money into small startups when interest rates bottomed out, and the blitz scaling that followed set off an arms race of perks to help startups attract top talent. Employees could work from home and set their own schedules. They pocketed wellness stipends and trotted the globe on extravagant off-sites. The tech startup Bolt gave many employees Fridays off.

"I think many individuals — founders included — lost sight of the true goal of a company. It is to make money," Mang-Git Ng, the founder of Anvil, a paperwork automation company, told BI.

Now, the executives who had lavished high salaries and fancy perks on their employees are resetting expectations, winding down remote work, and cutting head count.

"Everyone who comes into our office at Decagon has opted into working with a team that's here because we want to do big things and see bigger and better results," said Jesse Zhang, the founder of Decagon, who now badges into the office six days a week. "There's no such thing as a rocketship that doesn't have a certain level of intensity to fuel its trajectory."

Call it the Big Tech trickle-down effect.

"Founders aren't sugarcoating it," said Natan Fisher, who runs a recruiting firm, SingleSprout, that specializes in hiring technical talent. "I've had a few cofounders tell employees they aren't working hard enough, and, 'If you're not all in, no hard feelings, we can give severance, but we can't slow down.' Late nights, weekends, even people crashing at the office, it's real."

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Emma Cosgrove, Eugene Kim, and Pranav Dixit contributed to this report.

• Former Shopify VP Harish Abbott launched a new startup building an AI assistant for logistics.
• Abbott cofounded Deliverr and sold it to Shopify for $2.1 billion in 2022.
• Augment has raised $25 million in seed funding led by 8VC.

Harish Abbott, Deliverr cofounder and former Shopify vice president, launched a new startup called Augment out of stealth on Tuesday.

Augment is building an AI assistant for the logistics industry. It has raised $25 million in seed funding, led by 8VC.

The AI assistant, called Augie, can respond to emails and Slack messages, make and receive phone calls, manage workflows, and perform other routine tasks.

"You can text them, you can email them, you can message them on Slack. You can assign work to them, and they go about doing their work," Abbott told Business Insider in an exclusive interview.

Abbott said the idea for Augment came from a desire to use AI to make an impact on an industry he knows well. He cofounded Deliverr, a startup that built software to enable quick shipping, and sold it to Shopify for $2.1 billion in 2022. A year later, Shopify sold Deliverr (and the rest of its logistics business) to Flexport. Abbott spent just under a year at Flexport before starting to build Augment in the summer of 2024.

Augment will start in trucking, targeting shippers, brokers, and trucking companies before expanding to the larger logistics industry. Abbott said that Augie has been used in businesses that collectively have $20 billion of freight under management. Its early customers include Austin-based brokerage Arrive Logistics and third-party logistics provider NFI.

Trucking is a nearly trillion-dollar industry in the US, and trucking companies serve as the connective tissue for commerce, transporting shipments between warehouses, ports, and retail stores. The last three years have been difficult for this industry as it's endured one of the longest recessions in its history. This means transportation companies are looking for ways to alleviate pressure on their margins, Abbott said.

It's also a very fragmented industry. There are hundreds of thousands of trucking companies in the US, and no one standard system they all use to conduct business, besides email. Abbott said that when shadowing people working in this space, he saw that employees receive as many as 500 to 600 emails a day.

"When a shipper has to book a truck, they email maybe four or five brokers," Abbott said. "The broker responds, then they go back and forth and negotiate on a bid. Then the broker takes that and emails 10 or 15 trucking companies, then they respond."

'Logistics is not solved'

Abbott said his time at Shopify gave him an "even stronger feel of the problems" faced by the millions of merchants using the e-commerce platform. Getting their products to customers remains one of merchants' biggest challenges and costs.

His time at Flexport, meanwhile, showed how "messy" global trade can be.

"It reinforced for me that one, logistics is not solved. Two, it's crucially important. And three, I think AI is the answer to these problems," he said.

Augie runs on different large language models depending on the scenario, including Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's GPT-4, Meta's Llama, and DeepSeek. It learns from employees' emails, phone calls, and documents about how workers typically do their jobs. Abbott said that while Augie learns quickly, it still needs the help of employees to make decisions as it can't understand the nuance of human relationships.

"That's why the model for Augie is: I'm gonna superpower you, my human boss. I'm gonna bring you the knowledge. I'm gonna work 24/7 to take all the tedious parts away," Abbott said. "Now you can make a better judgment call than you would otherwise because you were so busy before."

Augment's founding team also includes CTO Artur Rivilis, who ran engineering for Deliverr, served as vice president of engineering at Shopify, and then spent some time at Flexport after its acquisition of Shopify Logistics. Cofounder Justin Hall, who will lead growth for Augment, had stints as CEO of logistics company Primo and as chief customer officer at YRC Worldwide. Hall was also previously an executive in residence at 8VC.

8VC, founded by Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale, was also the first investor in Deliverr.

"Augment's an even bigger idea — one that parallels Palantir's approach of understanding the workflow and knowledge ontology, to apply AI and solve critical problems," Lonsdale said. "Harish is poised to build a generational company that brings productivity and intelligence to one of the largest industries in the world."

Augment has a team of about 50 people, mostly working in engineering. It plans to build a customer success team in Chicago. It has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Toronto.

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• Shopify has acquired Vantage Discovery, a startup building AI search for retailers.
• Vantage Discovery was founded by two former Pinterest engineering leaders.
• Shopify has been acquiring startups in an effort to bring on more AI talent.

Shopify has acquired Vantage Discovery, a startup that builds AI-powered search functions for retailers.

Cofounders Lance Riedel and Nigel Daley both previously worked in engineering at Pinterest. Riedel built out Pinterest Shopping, while Daley worked in engineering infrastructure.

They started Vantage Discovery in early 2023 to bring a "Pinterest-like capability to any retailer" using generative AI, Daley said in an interview with Business Insider in February.

Vantage Discovery uses LLMs to enhance retailers' search functions, allowing shoppers to see more personalized, relevant results when searching through a store's product catalog.

"In the past, machine learning and AI had been held by some of the much bigger companies," he said. "Now with Gen AI and technology like Vantage Discovery, we can bring that same power to any retailer, from the smallest mom-and-pop shop to massive enterprises."

Riedel said in a LinkedIn post that Vantage Discovery would integrate its "revolutionary technology with Shopify's commerce platform." Daley confirmed the news in an email but declined to comment further on the deal.

"Vantage Discovery's search platform and mission-aligned team will play a key role in supercharging our work for both merchants and buyers," a Shopify spokesperson said to BI.

Shopify has been on an acquisition spree. It acquihired six startups in 2024 with the goal of bringing on AI talent.

"These have been very tactical, thoughtful AI hires and we want to continually be thoughtful, proactive, and judicious on thinking about the cash," CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said during the company's earnings call in February.

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• Ranpak makes sustainable packaging and automated packing systems.
• CEO Omar Asali says a "dark warehouse" devoid of workers is not the goal.
• He says that humans working in conjunction with robots "is a lot more compelling."

Omar Asali, CEO of sustainable packaging company Ranpak, says he's excited about what AI and automation can do for warehouse operations — but only if human workers are involved, too.

Ranpak makes paper packaging and automation systems that streamline the process of packing boxes before they are sent to customers.

Asali says that while robots in warehouses can help retailers save time and money, make their businesses more sustainable, and improve worker safety, he doesn't see humans being completely eliminated from the equation.

"I don't think automation is headed toward a dark warehouse with no labor," Asali said in a recent interview with Business Insider. "I think man and machine is a lot more compelling than machine alone."

He said that using automation in warehouses allows workers to transition from demanding, manual tasks, like loading and unloading boxes, to more skilled tasks they can do in conjunction with a robot.

"It will require upskilling and re-skilling, but I believe this is going to be a tool for further growth, further improvement with our customers, and more jobs down the road," Asali said.

Physical AI is modernizing warehouses

Ranpak is seeing the most demand from companies looking to use less plastic in packaging. Its flagship product is a biodegradable, renewable paper that keeps items from moving around inside boxes. Asali said the idea is to attract customers with sustainable packaging solutions and then keep them interested with automation that can help streamline their warehouse operations.

Ranpak's automated systems include a machine that optimizes package sizes by cutting cartons down to their highest point so that there is no excess room inside the boxes. It then glues the box lid in place.

It also has a system that uses computer vision to measure the amount of empty space inside a box, and then insert the appropriate amount of paper packaging material to fill it.

Asali said that physical AI is making robotic equipment more efficient and easier to use, and it's helping to make an older industry — packaging — more state-of-the-art. Ranpak, which was founded in 1972, can also give their customers more data than was possible before, on things like how many items should be packed in a box and how those items should be arranged.

"All this data is designed to make their packages smaller, more efficient, to make them use less energy," Asali said. "All these savings are going to go, ultimately, to these companies and to the consumer."

Ranpak also invests in other robotics companies that automate specific warehouse operations. Investments have included bets on Pickle Robot, which makes robots that can unload packages from trucks, and Rabot, which uses computer vision at employee packing stations to help optimize the process, improve safety, and reduce waste.

Amazon, Ikea, and Urban Outfitters are all customers of Ranpak. In January, Ranpak said in an SEC filing that it had issued Amazon a warrant to buy 18.7 million shares in the packaging company. The company says that Amazon is Ranpak's biggest customer, and Asali described the e-commerce giant as an "important strategic partner." An Amazon representative declined to comment further on their partnership.

Ranpak said in its March 6 earnings release that 142,700 packaging systems had been placed as of the end of 2024, a 1% increase year over year. More than 85,000 of those systems were machines that help workers fill boxes with paper more quickly. Its revenue grew 10% year over year in 2024, to $369 million.

• Sales for Shein and Temu slowed after Trump announced tariffs and de minimis changes.
• Shein's sales growth dropped significantly.
• The de minimis loophole remains open — for now.

Shein and Temu's sales slowed in the weeks after Trump announced tariffs and said he would close the de minimis loophole, February data from Earnest Analytics showed.

Shein seemed to take more of a hit than Temu. Between the weeks that ended February 1 and February 22, its sales growth slowed from 22% year over year to 9.6% year over year.

Temu's sales also decelerated, though at a slower rate, from 15.4% to 14.4%, which Earnest's head of marketing, Michael Maloof, said was in line with its usual weekly fluctuations. Earnest analyzes debit and credit card transactions from millions of US consumers.

By the week of March 1, Shein's sales growth was back up to 21.4% year over year.

The ups and downs demonstrate how closely US consumers are watching the news cycle — and could be a preview of what's to come when the Trump administration ends de minimis shipping for good.

"Nothing materially changed from an import perspective for Temu and Shein during February, and yet customers made fewer transactions during that period," Maloof told Business Insider. "The later recovery suggests this pullback could have been more news-driven than fundamentals-driven."

Representatives for Temu and Shein did not return a request for comment from BI.

The weeks when Shein's sales decelerated coincided with a series of whiplash moves in global trade.

In early February, Trump issued an executive order closing the de minimis loophole while imposing tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico. (The administration has since rescinded some of the tariffs on Canada and Mexico). De minimis, also known as Section 321, is a provision of US customs law that allows retailers to import goods duty-free as long as they are valued at less than $800 and sent directly to customers.

The announcement that de minimis shipping would no longer be allowed sent much of the retail world into chaos. While Shein and Temu's use of de minimis brought the provision into the mainstream, many other brands selling directly to consumers also use the loophole to find cost savings.

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

Just a few days after the executive order was issued, Trump issued a follow-up order saying that the loophole would remain open until customs officials could establish a new process for collecting duty on packages sent using the provision.

Logistics experts expect de minimis to go away soon, though the exact timing is still unclear.

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• TikTok Shop, the e-commerce arm of TikTok, launched in Mexico in February.
• It offers sellers a bridge into Latin America, a fast-growing region for online shopping.
• Its arrival in the country offers a way for US Shop sellers to hedge against a possible TikTok ban.

TikTok's future may be up in the air in the US, but it's ramping up in other parts of the world.

The company officially launched its e-commerce product, Shop, in Mexico in February after testing it in the country. The platform is still getting off the ground there, but it's attracting local sellers like beauty brands Sarelly, Renova, Pink Up Cosmetics, and Sinless Beauty.

The move across the border is also opening an opportunity for US brands to expand into a fast-growing market — and hedge against a possible TikTok ban.

Beauty brand KimChi Chic Beauty, supplement brand Beast Bites, and security-camera brand Wyze are among the US companies planning to expand into Mexico, per two Shop agencies that work with the firms.

"It's a logical play for any seller that saw success or could see success on TikTok Shop," said William August, CEO of the social-commerce agency Outlandish, which runs a livestream facility in Los Angeles and recently set up operations in Mexico. "Regardless of what happens in the US, they should be doing it anyway."

TikTok Shop has grown quickly in the US since it first began testing the feature there in 2022. But the app is operating on shaky ground due to a divestment law that requires its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app or essentially stop operating in the US. While that hasn't deterred many brands that sell goods on TikTok in the US, some are busy diversifying onto other platforms like live-selling app Whatnot or entertainment platforms like Flip and LTK. Moving into other TikTok Shop markets, like the UK, Singapore, and now Mexico, is another tactic.

How a US brand can expand into Mexico

In some instances, Outlandish is helping US merchants launch in other countries by registering a local business on their behalf, called a merchant of record.

The company also acts as a one-stop shop for other services, like logistics and compliance.

Outlandish set up a joint venture with marketing and retail media firm MindgruveMacarta to help bring US and global brands onto TikTok Shop. In February, Outlandish sent its US livestream training managers to Mexico to teach local staff about selling live, August said. It plans to open a video production hub in the country with the capacity to produce thousands of shopping videos.

"So long as you have a good product, when you enter a new market with TikTok Shop, you can grow a brand there," August said.

Social-commerce agency Orca is also working with third-party logistics providers in Mexico to help US brands start selling in the country, offering services like inventory management and compliance, said its CEO Max Benator. "If you're a brand in the US, you can't just turn on in Mexico," he said.

Shop's entry into a neighboring country allows US sellers to do more than lower their risk from a US ban. It gives them access to an e-commerce market that's on the rise. In September, EMARKETER forecast that e-commerce spending in Latin America would reach close to $180 billion in 2024.

Mexico, in particular, is expected to drive a lot of that growth. In 2024, EMARKETER forecast Mexico would be the fifth-fastest growing e-commerce market in the world, growing online sales by 15.7%.Major retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Mercado Libre are investing billions of dollars to improve their operations in Mexico and reach a nascent customer base there, according to the firm.

"Mexico and Latin America are some of the fastest growing e-commerce markets in the world," Benator said.

• Shein and Temu benefit from Trump's pause on ending the de minimis exemption — for now.
• The de minimis exemption allows duty-free imports under $800.
• Meanwhile, many companies that source their products from China are now paying tariffs.

Shein and Temu scored a win thanks to President Donald Trump. As tariffs are hitting retailers and forcing some to raise their prices, both companies are still able to use the de minimis exemption after the Trump administration temporarily paused its plan to eliminate it.

Both companies are doubly advantaged over some of their competitors — at least for now. Many businesses that manufacture their goods in China are now paying extra in tariffs, while de minimis allows companies like Temu and Shein to import low-cost items without paying any kind of duty.

"Everyone will be paying them except for Temu and Shein. (For now; we know de minimis is going away in the future,)" Marketplace Pulse founder Juozas Kaziukėnas said in a LinkedIn post. "Bizarrely, Temu and Shein never had it better."

Neither company responded to a request for comment from Business Insider.

In early February, Trump announced that he would simultaneously impose tariffs on Mexican, Canadian, and Chinese products and end the de minimis exemption, which allowed retailers to import goods duty-free as long as they were valued at less than $800 and being sent directly to customers.

But just a few days later, Trump issued another executive order that said de minimis — also known as Section 321 — would remain in place until customs officials could establish a new process for collecting duty on packages sent using the provision.

Meanwhile, the 20% tariffs on Chinese goods have gone ahead. (Trump temporarily paused the 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods on Thursday, saying they would be on hold until April 2.) That means that even if an item would have been subject to a tariff, importers do not currently have to pay that tariff if they are shipped via de minimis.

One reason that lawmakers have advocated for the repeal of de minimis in recent years is that it's difficult for American businesses to compete with companies using de minimis to save money. They also have argued that de minimis allows for the import of illicit goods like fentanyl — an argument that Trump has echoed in executive orders.

"The fact that we are immediately penalizing US businesses who manufacture offshore while providing this continued advantage to Chinese marketplaces such as Temu and Shein makes zero sense," Matthew Hertz, founder of the third-party logistics platform Third Person, said to BI.

He wrote on LinkedIn: "There is currently 0% tariffs on individual parcels entering the U.S. from anywhere, so long as values < $800. Even if it's a high-tariff item from China."

Logistics experts expect de minimis to go away, but it's not clear when.

Shein and Temu prepared for the end of de minimis by diversifying their supply chain and fulfilling more of their orders in the US. Both e-commerce companies have previously said they do not rely on de minimis to grow. Industry experts told BI in February that the companies' true advantage lies in their ultra-low prices and, in Shein's case, an ability to manufacture very trendy items in a short period of time.

The Chinese e-commerce disruptors are also not the only companies to use the de minimis exemption. US Customs and Border Protection said in a January press release that de minimis shipments increased by more than 600% from fiscal year 2015 to fiscal year 2023, going from 139 million a year to more than 1 billion. More than 1.36 billion shipments were sent via de minimis in fiscal year 2024, according to CBP.

The announcement that de minimis would be repealed — and then the sudden reversal of that announcement — left many businesses that sell cross-border into the US struggling to plan. With no clear timeline on when de minimis will be officially gone, they now have a bit more time to do so.

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