What Did Shopify's AI Memo Require?

Tobi Lütke says that once he is convinced something has to happen, he can do what a professional manager hired into the job cannot. He sent a company-wide memo requiring reflexive AI use for everything at Shopify, and he would ask, every time someone needed something from him, how their AI experiment had failed. No committee reviewed the memo before it went out. He is down on committees, and he says it might not have gone out if one had.

The memo drew headlines. Inside Shopify it did not feel controversial. Tobi Lütke says more people paid attention after the press made a big deal of it, including his mom, and that gave him a chance to talk about the AI work already underway. Alex Heath said it sounded like what Tobi Lütke already says at Town Hall. Tobi Lütke took that as a sign the company had already moved. A year and a half later, he says what is happening is nuts, and he wishes people could get a good look inside the companies that have gone furthest with AI.