Latest news with #TobiasLütke
Forbes
14-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
AI's Job Isn't To Innovate; It's To Facilitate Creation
William Li, CEO of FancyTech. Over the past year, we've heard every take on AI, from optimism and breakthrough promises to alarmism and underwhelming execution. Meanwhile, in the real world, something much more interesting—and practical—is happening: AI is no longer a side project. It's becoming part of how companies operate every day. Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke captured this shift in a company-wide memo shared recently that jump-started a conversation about AI's role and how it's used. He told employees: "Before asking for more Headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI." This wasn't just about managing resources; it was about changing mindsets. In line with Lütke's words, AI isn't something reserved for engineers or innovation teams. It's a tool every team should be using every day. Nowhere is this more visible than in the world of content, where visual storytelling, speed and scale are critical. Creative and marketing teams are under more pressure than ever to iterate fast, generate personalized content and stay on brand. Why Now In meetings, executives often ask me, "What can AI do for us?" A better question is: "What kind of company do we want to be in five years, and are we building the right foundation now?" The harder work is building the systems that make AI usable consistently, across teams and in a way that reflects a company's creative and commercial priorities. AI works best as a capability baked into how teams operate. We've seen that the companies making the most progress aren't always the ones with the most sophisticated tools. They're the ones that integrate AI into their existing workflows and embed a layer in the marketing and content stack. This approach allows their teams to move faster and scale creatively without sacrificing quality. In that sense, AI today is less like electricity and more like logistics. It determines how quickly you can go to market, how specifically you can speak to a customer and how easily you can adapt when the message or medium needs to shift. Folding AI Into The Workflow We've recently seen this shift firsthand in Indonesia, one of Southeast Asia's fastest-growing and most competitive digital markets. In a recent campaign for a national cereal brand, a creative agency we partner with was tasked with repositioning the brand around healthier breakfasts for children. They needed variations of the campaign for different regions, age groups, cultural norms and morning routines. Traditionally, that level of personalization would have required tough trade-offs: either sacrifice speed or blow the budget. Personalization at this scale used to be aspirational in a country with more than 17,000 islands and wildly diverse consumer segments. Now it's operational and more measurable than ever. Videos were adapted to morning rituals and content variations were tested and iterated in real time—across email, social media and e-commerce platforms—before doubling down on what resonated. What This Means For Teams AI is not just changing content production—it's reshaping how teams think about structure, speed and scale. In the past, growing demand meant growing headcount. Now, it's about how we rethink the workflow. When AI handles repetitive creative tasks, such as resizing, reformatting and versioning, people can focus on what AI can't do: framing the message, shaping the story and refining the voice. It's not about replacement. It's about leverage. However, leverage only works when AI is part of the system, not a tool used by a select few or reserved for a future initiative. For teams starting this journey, the first step isn't picking a tool—it's mapping your existing content process to identify repetitive, time-sensitive or rules-based tasks. These are your entry points for AI. From there, start small. Pilot AI on one campaign or segment with high variation needs, such as customer relationship management (CR) or performance ads. Track not just cost savings but throughput and testing velocity. When evaluating vendors, ask how they integrate into your creative workflow. Are outputs brand-consistent? Can they support local nuance at scale? Do they offer iteration loops? Think of AI vendors less like software and more like collaborators. In our experience, AI alone rarely satisfies all client requirements, no matter how good the models are. Even if automation covers 70% to 80% of the work, brands still need that final human touch to approve and refine outputs. We've found that the most effective approach is a hybrid one: combining high-efficiency AI with targeted human oversight. In this model, AI boosts productivity by 30% to 50% at each step and when orchestrated well, those gains compound. However, the last 20% (human-led review and refinement) ensures brand alignment and customer satisfaction. Train not just designers but project managers and marketers to act as orchestrators, people who can manage prompts, model output and iteration cycles. The shift is less about tool proficiency and more about learning to direct AI resources like a production pipeline. When measuring return on investment (ROI), go beyond the baseline of cost per asset. Track metrics such as content deployment speed, creative variants tested per week and performance lift from localized or time-of-day-specific content. These are the outcomes that show whether AI is helping your business scale with nuance. Rethinking The Next Phase The companies that will thrive in the next phase of transformation will integrate AI into their core offerings, treating AI not as a feature but as a foundation. It reshapes how quickly brands can move, how effectively you can test and learn and how aligned your creative output is with your brand's intent. We're seeing it already, in faster campaign cycles, leaner teams and more responsive brand storytelling. The companies that will thrive are not necessarily the most technical. They're the ones that understand this simple idea: AI is not a department. It's a layer. And the sooner you build on it, the more prepared you'll be, whether you're operating in Jakarta, Riyadh or New York. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Arabian Post
13-06-2025
- Business
- Arabian Post
Shopify Launches USDC Payment Pilot via Coinbase‑Stripe Base
E‑commerce platform Shopify will launch a pilot in late June allowing select U.S. and European merchants to accept USDC stablecoin payments, marking its first native integration of crypto payments into the platform-wide setup. Developed in partnership with Coinbase and integrated through Stripe, the initiative leverages Coinbase's Base blockchain and supports essential e‑commerce features, including refunds, chargebacks and delayed payment capture. The opt‑out model means USDC acceptance will be enabled by default for participating merchants, who can also access up to 0.5 per cent cashback on USDC transactions. Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke, also a Coinbase board member, highlighted that the platform aspires to expand the pilot to all merchants across the U.S. and Europe by end‑2025. Coinbase head of blockchain Jesse Pollak described the level of integration as 'holy crap' compared to existing solutions, noting that the custom protocol built on Base addresses operational challenges previously unmet by third‑party crypto plug‑ins. Stripe's role is central in embedding stablecoin functionality into Shopify Payments, enabling merchants to receive USDC or convert funds into local currency seamlessly. ADVERTISEMENT Stablecoins such as USDC offer the stability of a dollar‑pegged asset while enabling near‑instant, low‑cost transactions via Layer‑2 networks like Base. Stripe cites a surge in monthly stablecoin payment volume from $2 billion to $6.3 billion over the past two years. Shopify's integration now brings that rail within reach of over a million merchants based in 34 countries. The e‑commerce industry's attention to stablecoins has intensified, with major financial institutions and tech companies—including Visa, PayPal, JPMorgan, Deutsche Bank, Apple, Meta, Airbnb and Google—either building or experimenting with stablecoin infrastructure. Shopify's entry at this scale signals a significant shift in digital commerce towards crypto‑native settlement methods. Operationally, the rollout addresses common e‑commerce pain points. The bespoke smart contract protocol supports standard payment flows—authorisation, capture, refund, tax processing and inventory reservation—aligning cryptocurrency transactions with merchant back‑end operations. Merchants can choose to receive USDC directly into their crypto wallets or automatically convert to local currency with zero foreign‑exchange fees. Additionally, U.S. customers will start receiving a 1 per cent cashback incentive on USDC payments later this year. Industry analysts suggest that embedding stablecoin capability into mainstream platforms like Shopify could accelerate global digital currency adoption. It lowers technical barriers for merchants and broadens spending options for customers holding crypto assets. While credit cards and traditional rails remain dominant, the integration demonstrates that stablecoin payments are maturing into a reliable option for commercial transactions. The pilot will effectively test merchant and consumer appetite for crypto payments on a large scale. Pending successful outcomes, Shopify plans to roll out access to all merchants using Shopify Payments across the U.S. and Europe by the end of 2025, with potential further extension globally.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Shopify partners with Coinbase and Stripe in landmark stablecoin deal
Big Tech's fever for stablecoins won't stop. The e-commerce giant Shopify announced Thursday that it was rolling out stablecoin payments to all users on its platform later this year in its largest crypto play yet. The publicly traded tech company lets merchants—including vintage clothes sellers, cosmetics businesses, and electronics companies—set up their own online marketplaces. By late June, Shopify will let a select group of users accept payments in USDC, a stablecoin issued by the crypto company Circle, which recently had one of the year's hottest IPOs. 'In our own philosophical framework, we are extremely aligned with everything that crypto stands for,' Tobias Lütke, the CEO of Shopify and a Coinbase board member, said onstage at a Coinbase conference on Thursday. Shopify will then gradually expand access to merchants across its network in the U.S. and Europe before opening up stablecoin payments to every merchant who uses its platform. The e-commerce company worked with Coinbase to develop a payments protocol to handle chargebacks, refunds, and other intricacies of retail payments on Coinbase's blockchain, Base. It also collaborated with fintech giant Stripe, one of Shopify's payments processors, to integrate stablecoins into the e-commerce company's existing software stack. 'I think other payment processors will look at what Shopify is building and be like, 'Holy crap,'' Jesse Pollak, a Coinbase executive who oversees the crypto exchange's wallet and blockchain divisions, told Fortune. Shopify's plunge into crypto comes as stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies pegged to assets like the U.S. dollar, become one of the buzziest sectors outside of AI in Silicon Valley. Rather than wait days for a bank wire to clear, advocates say that stablecoins reduce cross-border transfer fees and speed up transactions. Tech giants like Meta, Apple, X, Airbnb, and Google have taken notice and have all been in talks with crypto companies to explore stablecoin integrations. Moreover, the Senate is poised to pass legislation that regulates the crypto assets. And Stripe has acquired two crypto startups in the past year as it looks to carve out its own crypto payments strategy. 'This will be the beginning of a lot of dominoes falling,' Pollak, the Coinbase executive, told Fortune, in reference to Shopify's own stablecoin play. That being said, this isn't the first time the publicly traded e-commerce company has dipped its toes into crypto. Shopify, headquartered in Ottawa, has long let third-party software developers like and Strike provide plug-ins for merchants to accept cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and even USDC for payment. However, these integrations came from developers outside Shopify and were opt-in, meaning that merchants had to explicitly choose to integrate crypto payments into their online marketplaces. Shopify's most recent stablecoin play is opt-out. Merchants will have to adjust their settings to not accept payments in USDC, a Coinbase spokesperson told Fortune. Moreover, the payments protocol Coinbase developed with Shopify is the product of executives and developers from both companies collaborating over the past nine months, Pollak said. Shopify will give merchants who accept USDC up to 0.5% cash back in the U.S. and other countries, and it plans to also give customers who decide to pay with USDC an unspecified percentage of cash back later this year. This story was originally featured on
CNBC
30-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Tech companies are requiring employees to learn and use AI at work—here's the best way to do that, experts say
Using artificial intelligence on the job is becoming increasingly common across the U.S. Some bosses — particularly at tech companies — even require it, for either some or all of their employees. E-commerce giant Shopify, for example, is in the "all" camp, co-founder and CEO Tobias Lütke wrote in a company-wide memo, which he posted to social media network X on April 7. "Using AI effectively is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify. It's a tool of all trades today, and will only grow in importance," Lütke wrote. "Frankly, I don't think it's feasible to opt out of learning the skill of applying AI in your craft; you are welcome to try, but I want to be honest, I cannot see this working out today, and definitely not tomorrow." Fiverr CEO Micha Kaufmann similarly told employees and freelancers to "study, research and master the latest AI solutions in your field," in an internal email he posted to X on April 8. "AI is coming for your jobs," he wrote. "Heck, it's coming for my job, too. This is a wake-up call."Duolingo co-founder and CEO Luis von Ahn joined in, too. "Duolingo is going to be AI-first," von Ahn wrote in an email posted to Duolingo's LinkedIn page on April 28. "We'll gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle. ... Headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work." Plans to foster an AI-empowered workforce could be timely: Tech luminaries like Bill Gates and Mark Cuban say that AI will greatly change the way many people live and work, potentially as soon as within the next 10 years. But encouraging AI at work — in a way that's actually helpful — may not be quite as easy as simply requiring that people start using it. Here's what good bosses can do to get their employees interested in using AI, according to leadership experts. The most important lesson for any leader, says Rohan Verma: If you mandate or heavily encourage AI, you need to teach employees how to use it in ways that'll specifically benefit your business. Verma, who runs San Francisco-based executive coaching firm Arbor Advisory, says he worked with Microsoft-owned GitHub to help implement the parent company's Copilot AI tool across the organization. "[Microsoft] rolled out a pretty formal coaching program, specific resources and proper onboarding. They didn't just say 'Use the tool.' They gave a set of options on how to thrive with it," he says. If you want to get more people around you to use AI, start by gauging how much they already know about the technology, recommends Kalifa Oliver, an author, executive advisor and global director for employee experience at Ford. Then, if you have the budget, "invest in the infrastructure" to help train your colleagues on AI tools that are new to them, or advanced ways of using familiar systems, says Oliver. This could include access to online courses and learning platforms, mentorship programs or assessments to gauge what employees already know about using AI and what they need to be more efficient, she adds. Don't use AI primarily as a cost-cutting method, automating tasks best done by humans or even replacing human headcount, warns Oliver. Even the most advanced AI models make factual errors, and if the wrong human is out of the office, those mistakes could go unnoticed and create problems, she notes. "I think CEOs will start taking an all-in stance because it sounds good, unfortunately. Do I think that it's a stance that CEOs should take? That's a different story," Oliver says. ,
Forbes
13-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Business Tech News: Shopify CEO Says AI First Before Employees
Toronto , Canada - 22 May 2019; Tobias Lütke, CEO, Shopify, (Photo By David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile ... More via Getty Images) Here are five things in business tech news that happened this week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them? Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke has implemented a new hiring policy that prioritizes artificial intelligence (AI) over human hires. In a memo to employees, Lütke stated that teams must demonstrate why their needs cannot be fulfilled using AI before requesting additional resources. This approach reflects Shopify's commitment to integrating AI into its operations, including employee performance reviews. The company has already embraced generative AI tools – such as Shopify Magic and Sidekick – to enhance productivity. However, this shift has also led to significant layoffs in recent years. (Source: The Verge) Why this is important for your business: This strategy seems a little extreme. And it's curious to me that it became public. Is this more of a PR stunt than an actual strategy to impress shareholders and show the world how ahead of the game Shopify is? Making an announcement like this also isn't exactly the best way to attract and retain talent to an organization. As I've written repeatedly, AI will be replacing employees. Big companies are doing this. Other organizations will soon be joining in as the technology becomes more affordable and accurate. But announcing that you're effectively doing this is not only a little premature but also isn't a good look. Lance Whitney of ZDNet wrote about the 'variety of compelling advantages' ChatGPT has to offer. He lists five reasons for why he uses it daily despite the available alternatives. Web Searching: ChatGPT's AI-powered search provides direct answers without distractions. Deep Research: With a paid subscription, ChatGPT can conduct detailed research, saving time by compiling comprehensive reports from online sources. Personalized Chats: The chatbot tailors interactions based on user preferences, enhancing the conversational experience. Prompt Writing Assistance: ChatGPT helps users craft effective prompts for various tasks. Replacing Siri: The AI platform's versatility and capabilities make it a strong contender for replacing traditional virtual assistants like Siri. (Source: ZDNet) Why this is important for your business: He loves ChatGPT and so do I. But I also use other AI platforms – Google Gemini, Microsoft CoPilot and Perplexity - for certain tasks. Every business person should have a subscription to at least one. They're like having an expert assistant at your disposal to help advise and perform certain tasks for you. ChatGPT and its counterparts will soon be as critical a mobile app as your email, text and phone apps. Management software platform Procore has published its "Future State of Construction" report – highlighting how AI, automation, and workforce changes are transforming the construction industry. Key findings touch on AI automation, workforce shifts, mental health, data utilization and emerging activities. (Source: Stock Titan) Why this is important for your business: The report has extremely valuable insights for companies in the construction field. For example, AI and automation technologies are reducing inefficiencies, with 55 percent of leaders expecting automation to disrupt the industry within five years, and that, with 53 percent of workers retiring by 2036, companies are focusing on upskilling programs to attract and retain talent. My best clients are always looking at information available now and using that to drive their future growth. There's plenty of data here that will help owners and managers of construction firms make decisions this year that will impact their companies in the years to come. Bank of America says it has integrated AI across its operations, with over 90 percent of its 213,000 employees using AI tools to enhance productivity and client service. (Source: Bank Automation News) Why this is important for your business: Like many big financial services firms, the bank has leaned into generative AI tools to assist employees, and make its call center more efficient. The bank is also using AI to power over one million interactive simulations annually, aiding employees in client interactions. I recently wrote about how JP Morgan is implementing AI tools across their organization to accomplish many of the same goals. At Shoptalk's Spring 2025 conference in Las Vegas, retail leaders discussed the transformative role of AI in the industry. Highlights include Customer Experience: AI is enhancing customer service and loss prevention, while shoppers are using AI to assist with purchases. Creative Tools: Meta showcased generative AI tools for ad creation, emphasizing the shift from automation to creative AI. Storytelling: Toys R Us used OpenAI's Sora platform to create a branded video, demonstrating how AI can innovate storytelling methods. Human-AI Collaboration: A recurring theme was that humans with AI will outperform those without it, highlighting the importance of integrating AI into workflows. (Source: Retail Dive) Why this is important for your business: More AI use cases, this time in the retail industry. The above business tech news items all have one thing in common this week: they're showing how AI is being used in different industries, from construction and finance to retail and general every day assistance. In 2025 AI is clearly beginning to mature and larger companies that have invested tens of millions of dollars are starting to receive that return on investment. What's important is that many of these technologies – as they're being teste and rolled out by big corporations – will ultimately trickle down to small and mid sized businesses. Each week I round up the five business tech news stories that impact my company and my clients the most and then provide a little insight.
