Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke has a new hiring policy that puts AI front and center.
Lutke posted a memo he sent to employees on X this week that encourages workers to use AI to accomplish tasks. He wrote that every team should “demonstrate why they cannot get what they want done using AI” before asking for more resources or additional human employees.
“Using AI effectively is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at Shopify,” Lutke stated, per screenshots of the memo he posted on X. The post has drawn more than 2.6 million views.
Shopify, with a market value of over $100 billion at the time of writing, provides small businesses a platform to sell products online. Customers can build online stores and sell products on sites like TikTok and YouTube. The company, which was founded in 2006, hosts over 5.5 million active online stores and made $8.88 billion in revenue in 2024, a 24% year-over-year increase.
Lutke wrote in the memo that he had seen employees multiply their efforts and use AI “to get 100X the work done.” He asked employees to experiment with AI available internally, including Microsoft Copilot AI chatbot and Anthropic’s Claude code helper.
Lutke also asked employees to think about how their team would look with the addition of autonomous AI agents, which can carry out complex tasks like browsing the web without human assistance. Their ideas for AI agents could lead to “really fun discussions and projects,” he wrote.
Lutke is enforcing AI experimentation across Shopify, writing in the memo that Shopify would add questions about AI use to its performance and peer reviews.
“AI will totally change Shopify, our work, and the rest of our lives,” Lutke wrote. “Our job is to figure out what entrepreneurship looks like in a world where AI is universally available.”
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In September, Shopify reported that half of its merchants planned to use AI tools like Shopify Magic, an AI image editor and writer that the company released in January 2024.
Shopify has made reductions to its workforce over the past two years, though the changes have not been attributed to AI. In December 2022, the company had 11,600 employees compared to 8,100 in December 2024. Shopify laid off 10% of its workforce in July 2022, or about 1,000 employees, and 20% in May 2023.
Business Insider reported in January that the company had quietly let go of about a dozen employees during the month.
