When Anthony Sardain began developing Cavela in 2023, an AI startup that helps brands automate supplier sourcing, he did not foresee that new tariffs would drive customers to become increasingly wary of manufacturing products in China. “You don’t just walk into Vietnam and build up a supply chain,” Sardain told TechCrunch. “A lot of brands […]
Cavela lands $6.6M to help brands beat pre-tariff manufacturing costs Read More »
Adobe said on Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire search engine optimization company Semrush for about $1.9 billion in cash, as the Photoshop maker seeks to augment its suite of marketing offerings. In a statement, Adobe said it would offer $12 per share for Semrush, almost double the latter’s closing price of $6.89 on
Adobe to buy Semrush for $1.9 billion Read More »
OpenAI is pushing deeper into retail, with Target set to debut a new ChatGPT-powered app for shoppers in coming weeks. The news follows OpenAI’s move last month to start adding dedicated retail apps to ChatGPT, including Canva, Coursera, Figma, Expedia, Spotify, and Zillow. It also comes as OpenAI races to rake in AI-driven commerce via
Target joins OpenAI’s growing list of retail apps Read More »
Views on sponsored videos on YouTube have risen 28% year-on-year, and the number of sponsored videos has grown by 54% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, according to a report from Tubefilter. What’s more, ad spend through creator channels has been steadily rising and is even set to outperform traditional media in some cases.
Agentio secures $40M from Forerunner as it scales its creator marketplace beyond YouTube Read More »
When Nigel Morris tells you he’s worried about the economy, you listen. As industry observers know, Morris co-founded Capital One and pioneered lending to subprime borrowers, building an empire on understanding exactly how much financial stress the average American can handle. Now, as an early investor in Klarna and other buy-now-pay-later companies like Aplazo in
BNPL is expanding fast, and that should worry everyone Read More »
Meta is overhauling Facebook Marketplace with new collaborative tools, social features, an improved checkout experience, and Meta AI integrations, the company announced Thursday. Marketplace is getting a new “collections” feature that lets users create groups of listings and invite friends to join. Users can get started by saving a listing, starting a new collection, and
Facebook Marketplace gets new collaborative and social features, Meta AI integrations Read More »
Google is rolling out a suite of AI shopping updates just ahead of the holiday season. The company on Thursday unveiled a host of new tools and features, including conversational shopping in Google Search, new shopping features within its Gemini app, agentic checkout, and even an AI tool that can call local stores to find
Recession fears aren’t hurting the wishlist and shopping app GoWish, which is seeing record numbers ahead of the 2025 holiday season. The app, which has north of 13.6 million registered users, had its best day yet this week, when on Monday it hit No. 2 on the U.S. App Store. While GoWish has seen similar
GoWish’s shopping and wishlist app is having its biggest year yet Read More »
Amazon has told Perplexity to get its agentic browser out of its online store, the companies both confirmed publicly on Tuesday. After warning Perplexity multiple times that Comet, its AI-powered shopping assistant, was violating Amazon’s terms of service by not identifying itself as an agent, the ecommerce giant sent the AI search engine startup a
Amazon sends legal threats to Perplexity over agentic browsing Read More »
E-commerce software provider Shopify is bullish on AI-powered shopping agents, citing AI as an “incredible tool” to enable more entrepreneurs and calling it the “biggest shift in technology since the internet” during its third-quarter earnings call. The company, which partnered with ChatGPT maker OpenAI in September, reported that traffic from AI tools to its online
Shopify says AI traffic is up 7x since January, AI-driven orders are up 11x Read More »
