A memo by Shopify’s CEO Tobi Lütke sets a company-wide expectation for the use of AI not just throughout the company but also encourages employees to think about how their end users can use AI. Everyone needs to read this because it marks a pivotal moment in how everyone should be using AI to hundredfold increase what they can accomplish and to visualize how AI can be employed for end users as well.
The internal memo details a company-wide reflexive AI usage strategy, which means using AI as a matter of course. It sets the stage for reshaping how merchants use Shopify and points toward a future where entrepreneurship on Shopify is AI-native by design. The memo signals how AI is swiftly becoming central to how all businesses will operate, especially yours.
Reflexive Use Of AI
The heart of the memo is the CEOs encouragement of discovering how AI can be applied to every aspect of how work gets done internally, citing his own usage of AI and how he feels he’s only scratching the surface of how it can be integrated into his own workflow. He asks all employees to “tinker” with AI and encourage company-wide adoption so that the usage of AI becomes reflexive.
His use of the word reflexive is important because it means doing something without consciously thinking about it. The express meaning then is that he really wants AI everywhere and the reason for that is because AI has the ability to boost productivity not just ten times but a hundredfold.
Tobias advocates for the transformational qualities of AI as a productivity multiplier, citing the reflexive use of it for unlocking exponential gains in what can be accomplished at Shopify.
He wrote:
“We are all lucky to work with some amazing colleagues, the kind who contribute 10X of what was previously thought possible. It’s my favorite thing about this company. And what’s even more amazing is that, for the first time, we see the tools become 10X themselves.
I’ve seen many of these people approach implausible tasks, ones we wouldn’t even have chosen to tackle before, with reflexive and brilliant usage of AI to get 100X the work done.”
Workplace Expectations and Requirements
What’s important about the Lütke memo is that it sets expectations about the use of AI in the workplace in a way that should serve as an inspiration for how all workplaces may consider following as well.
Using AI effectively is now a fundamental expectation of all Shopify employees and it will be factored into the peer and performance review questionnaires. Employees will be mandated to demonstrate why AI cannot be used to accomplish goals before asking for more resources. The expectations for AI usage is not just about software engineers, it applies to all employees, including all the way to the top at the executive management level.
AI At Every Workflow Step
The memo sets the expectation that AI must be involved during the GSD (Get Sh*t Done) prototype phase and at a “fraction of the time it used to take.” Teams are also encouraged to envision their projects as if AI were also a part of the team.
He writes:
“What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team? This question can lead to really fun discussions and projects.”
And elsewhere:
“In my On Leadership memo years ago, I described Shopify as a red queen race based on the Alice in Wonderland story—you have to keep running just to stay still. In a company growing 20-40% year over year, you must improve by at least that every year just to re-qualify. This goes for me as well as everyone else.
This sounds daunting, but given the nature of the tools, this doesn’t even sound terribly ambitious to me anymore. It’s also exactly the kind of environment that our top performers tell us they want. Learning together, surrounded by people who also are on their own journey of personal growth and working on worthwhile, meaningful, and hard problems is precisely the environment Shopify was created to provide. This represents both an opportunity and a requirement, deeply connected to our core values of Be a Constant Learner and Thrive on Change. These aren’t just aspirational phrases—they’re fundamental expectations that come with being a part of this world-class team. This is what we founders wanted, and this is what we built.”
Learning, Collaboration, and Community
The other exciting part of Lütke’s memo for AI usage in the workplace is that he encourages employees to share their discoveries and breakthroughs with each other so that all employees can benefit from new and creative ways of getting things done with AI, to share all of their wins with each other.
“We’ll learn and adapt together as a team. We’ll be sharing Ws (and Ls!) with each other as we experiment with new AI capabilities, and we’ll dedicate time to AI integration in our monthly business reviews and product development cycles. Slack and Vault have lots of places where people share prompts that they developed, like #revenue-ai-use-cases and #ai-centaurs.”
Takeaways
Lütke’s memo shows how AI is radically changing the workplace at Shopify and how it can spread across every workforce, including your own.
Shopify is envisioning the next stage of ecommerce entrepreneurship, AI-everything, where AI is an ubiquitous presence for merchants. This is an example of the kind of leadership all entrepreneurs and small businesses should have, to start thinking of how they can integrate AI for themselves and their customers instead of lowering the window blinds to spy across the street to see what competitors are doing.
Read the entire memo:
— tobi lutke (@tobi) April 7, 2025
Featured Image by Shutterstock/TarikVision
