Amazon starts testing ‘ultra-fast’ 30-minute deliveries
The new “ultra-fast” delivery option will allow Amazon to better compete with services like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Instacart.
Commerce
Shopify resolves outage disrupting merchants on Cyber Monday
Shopify was down for many merchants this morning, preventing them from processing transactions. It appears to be fixed now.
Amazon’s AI chatbot Rufus drove sales on Black Friday
On Black Friday, Amazon sessions that resulted in a sale were up 100% in the U.S. when the AI chatbot Rufus was used. They only increased by 20% when Rufus wasn’t used.
Korea’s Coupang says data breach exposed nearly 34M customers’ personal information
E-commerce company Coupang has confirmed a massive data breach affecting 33.7 million customer accounts in South Korea.
Black Friday sets online spending record of $11.8B, Adobe says
American consumers spent $11.8 billion online on Black Friday, according to data from Adobe Analytics, which says it tracks more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail websites.
New York state law takes aim at personalized pricing
Businesses that use personalized pricing are now required to tell customers, “This price was set by an algorithm using your personal data.”
SoftBank stays in as Meesho $606M IPO becomes India’s first major e-commerce listing
Meesho heads for India’s first big e-commerce IPO next week.
Onton raises $7.5M to expand its AI-powered shopping site beyond furniture
Onton, which change its name from Deft, is giving users an infinite canvas with AI-powered image generation to nudge them towards making quicker purchase decisions
OpenAI and Perplexity are launching AI shopping assistants, but competing startups aren’t sweating it
Startup founders building AI shopping tools think general-purpose models are too broad to deliver truly personalized shopping experiences.
Cavela lands $6.6M to help brands beat pre-tariff manufacturing costs
The startup claims that its AI agents can reduce the cost of product manufacturing by an average of 35%.