Ingrid — a startup out of Stockholm, Sweden, not this writer (unfortunately) — has raised €21 million, or just under $23 million, to fuel the growth of a business aiming to improve the last, messy mile of online shopping, delivery. Using data science and some big ideas about how delivery will evolve in the years […]

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Amazon announced today the launch of an AI-powered shopping assistant it’s calling Rufus that’s been trained on the e-commerce giant’s product catalog as well as information from around the web. The company says the new tool will launch to a subset of U.S. customers in beta, starting today, before expanding to more users in the […]

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A new luxury goods e-commerce startup dubbed Long Story Short has a provocative concept: it’s $1,000 per month to join for the privilege of shopping its curated collection. Shocking as that sounds, founder Joseph Einhorn believes he understands this sliver of the e-commerce market, and why many online luxury ventures to date have failed to […]

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In a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Walmart president and CEO Doug McMillon and other Walmart execs offered a glimpse as to how the retail giant was putting new technologies, including augmented reality (AR), drones, generative AI, and other artificial intelligence tech to work in order improve the shopping experience […]

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After recently turning to generative AI to enhance its product reviews, e-commerce giant Amazon today shared how it’s now using AI technology to help customers shop for apparel online. The company explains it’s now using large language models, generative AI, and machine learning to power four AI-powered features that will help customers find clothing that […]

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Amazon today is launching its own competitor to Goodreads, a book tracking and recommendations site it also owns. The retailer announced the launch of a new Amazon feature, Your Books, which will organize all the books you’ve bought, borrowed, or saved, including print books, as well as Amazon’s Kindle and Audible titles. This library will […]

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Thanksgiving Thursday, when stores in the U.S. are closed and many are spending time off work, has become the de facto start of the holiday shopping season both for those looking to bargains online, and for online retailers to kick off holiday sales deals to meet that demand. But if there is a message from […]

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eBay is unloading its remaining shares in the online classified business Adevinta to private equity firms Permira and Blackstone for $2.2 billion in cash and 20% equity, it said. Adevinta had originally acquired eBay’s own classified business back in 2020, leaving eBay with $2.2 billion in cash and 540 million Adevinta shares. While the new deal […]

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Chewy, the online pet supplies company that sold to PetSmart in 2017 for $3.35 billion, but then split off a few years later, is the latest company to undergo layoffs, TechCrunch has learned. According to multiple sources, the pet supplier has laid off over 200 employees — a figure Chewy confirmed — including those in […]

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The Rounds, a sustainable “household restocking” service, wants to prove that last-mile logistics can be done both efficiently and profitably. Now, it’s claiming a significant milestone on the latter, as the startup claims it’s profitable not only at the unit economic level but also in terms of how it operates its fulfillment centers — the […]

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Only weeks after TikTok Shop’s entry into the U.S. market, YouTube today is making it easier for consumers to shop products presented by its own creator community. The company is introducing new creator-focused features that will allow them to add timestamps to videos for their tagged products and tag their affiliate products in bulk across […]

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New York-based peer-to-peer fashion rental marketplace Pickle, which lets users earn passive income from their closets, is readying an expansion with the close of an $8 million seed round. The company, which was run by just its two co-founders, CEO Brian McMahon and COO Julia O’Mara, up until June, is now planning to expand into […]