Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke told employees: “There's no way to make this good news”

Shopify is cutting 20% of its workforce and selling most of its logistics business to Flexport. Investors were worried that the logistics effort was dragging down Shopify’s balance sheet.

So, Shopify is selling its 2022 $2.1 billion acquisition Deliverr and any progress it’s made on Shopify-operated warehouses for a 13% equity stake in Flexport. They’re also selling 6 River Systems, a warehouse automation and robotics company they purchased in 2019 for $450 million, to UK grocery firm Ocado for an undisclosed sum.

Lütke is incentivizing more employees to be individual contributors and is prioritizing efficiency in its hiring process. This means they will be fewer managers overall. They will also be doubling down on finding future uses for AI in e-commerce.

Rapid Rundown

• 💼 Shopify is cutting 20% of its workforce and selling most of its logistics business to Flexport.

• 🤖 Shopify is doubling down on finding more uses for AI in e-commerce and is prioritizing efficiency in its hiring process.

Wikipedia’s Identity Crisis: To Bot or Not to Bot?

Wikipedia is having a bit of an identity crisis. Should they use large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT to generate and summarize articles? On one hand, it could save a lot of time and effort. On the other hand, it could lead to a flood of bad content that would overwhelm lesser-known wikis.

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking into building tools to identify bot-generated content, but the community is divided. Some say large language models should be allowed to train on Wikipedia content, while others worry about a feedback loop of biased information.

There’s even talk of using BLOOM, a large language model with behavioral restrictions to enforce responsible AI use. It’s like a sci-fi movie where the robots are taking over, but instead of world domination, they just want to write encyclopedia articles.

Rapid Rundown

• 🤖 Debate on using large language models to generate/summarize Wikipedia articles.

• 🧐 Concerns about machine-generated content needing human review to avoid bad content.

Stripe and Uber's new partnership leaves Lyft feeling like the third wheel

After three long years of wooing, Stripe, the $50 billion fintech company, has signed a "strategic payments partnership" with Uber, one of its biggest deals yet. This comes as a surprise since Stripe's long-time partner, Lyft, is Uber's biggest rival. However, Stripe has reassured that Lyft will remain a customer.

Stripe will work with Uber in eight of Uber's biggest markets, including the US, the UK, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Japan. While the financial details of the partnership have not been disclosed, Stripe will earn commissions from each transaction on Uber's platform.

Stripe will provide Uber with a new payments frontier, integrating Stripe Financial Connections and Link to let users import banking details to pay for services directly from their bank accounts. This deal marks a significant step for Stripe, which has been working on an Uber partnership for years, and opens the door for the two companies to work together more.

Rapid Rundown

• 🚗 Stripe signed a “strategic payments partnership” with Uber in 8 markets including the US and UK.

• 💳 Stripe will provide Uber with a new payments frontier, integrating Stripe Financial Connections and Link.

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Articles & Resources

Some Things I Think — Essay on slow wealth accumulation and societal beliefs.

The Open Letter on AI Doesn't Go Far Enough — Early AI researcher warns of grim future.

Should a Head of Product Make Strategic Product Decisions? — Explores whether product strategy should be determined by the head or individual managers.

Rules of Thumb for Software Development Estimations — Comprehensive guide to software development estimations.