Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke has a new hiring policy that places AI entrance and heart.
Lutke posted a memo he despatched to workers on X this week that encourages employees to make use of AI to perform duties. He wrote that each staff ought to “exhibit why they can not get what they need finished utilizing AI” earlier than asking for extra sources or extra human workers.
“Utilizing AI successfully is now a basic expectation of everybody at Shopify,” Lutke acknowledged, per screenshots of the memo he posted on X. The publish has drawn greater than 2.6 million views.
Shopify, with a market worth of over $100 billion on the time of writing, offers small companies a platform to promote merchandise on-line. Clients can construct on-line shops and promote merchandise on websites like TikTok and YouTube. The corporate, which was founded in 2006, hosts over 5.5 million lively on-line shops and made $8.88 billion in revenue in 2024, a 24% year-over-year enhance.
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Lutke wrote within the memo that he had seen workers multiply their efforts and use AI “to get 100X the work finished.” He requested workers to experiment with AI accessible internally, together with Microsoft Copilot AI chatbot and Anthropic’s Claude code helper.
Lutke additionally requested workers to consider how their staff would look with the addition of autonomous AI agents, which may perform complicated duties like looking the net with out human help. Their concepts for AI brokers may result in “actually enjoyable discussions and initiatives,” he wrote.
Lutke is imposing AI experimentation throughout Shopify, writing within the memo that Shopify would add questions on AI use to its efficiency and peer opinions.
“AI will completely change Shopify, our work, and the remainder of our lives,” Lutke wrote. “Our job is to determine what entrepreneurship appears to be like like in a world the place AI is universally accessible.”
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In September, Shopify reported that half of its retailers deliberate to make use of AI instruments like Shopify Magic, an AI picture editor and author that the corporate launched in January 2024.
Shopify has made reductions to its workforce over the previous two years, although the modifications haven’t been attributed to AI. In December 2022, the corporate had 11,600 employees in comparison with 8,100 in December 2024. Shopify laid off 10% of its workforce in July 2022, or about 1,000 workers, and 20% in May 2023.
Enterprise Insider reported in January that the corporate had quietly let go of about a dozen workers through the month.
