This internal memo was sent by Tobi Lütke in April 2025.
📝 Editor's note (2026): This memo has become one of the most cited documents on AI in the workplace. ⚠️ Consider: re-hosting the full text of a leaked document vs. linking with commentary — an editorial decision for David.
Tobi Lütke's Internal Memo: Thoughtful Use of AI Is Now a Core Expectation at Shopify
Context: This is an internal Shopify memo that I'm sharing because it leaked and was (probably) being shown with malicious intent.
Team,
we are entering an era where more merchants and entrepreneurs could be created than at any point in history. We often talk about reducing barriers to enable more people to choose this as a career. Every step of the entrepreneurial journey is filled with decisions that require skill, judgment, and knowledge. Having AI by their side on that journey — and increasingly not just consulting but doing the work for our merchants — is a staggering step-change.
Our job here at Shopify is to make our software unambiguously the best platform for the best businesses of the future to thrive on. We do that by keeping everyone at the cutting edge and bringing the best tools to make our merchants more successful than they ever imagined. To do that, we must be absolutely ahead.
Thoughtful use of AI is now a core expectation at Shopify.
Maybe you're already there and this memo feels strange. In that case, you're already using AI as a thinking partner, a deep researcher, a critic, a tutor, or a pair programmer. I use it all the time, but even I feel like I'm only scratching the surface. This is the fastest shift in how work gets done that I've experienced in my career, and I've been pretty open about it: you've heard me talk about AI in weekly videos, podcasts, meetings, and... the Summit! Last summer I used agents to create my presentation and talked about it. I did this as a challenge and an invitation for everyone to play with AI, to dispel any skepticism or confusion about whether it matters at every level. Many of you took up that challenge, and all of us who did were absolutely blown away by the new capabilities and tools AI can provide to amplify our skills, our craft, and fill our gaps.
What we've learned so far is that using AI well is a skill we need to carefully develop... by using it a lot. It's just too different from everything else. The call to experiment with it was right, but it was framed too much as a mere suggestion. That's what I want to change today. We've also learned that, unlike most tools, AI acts as a multiplier. We're fortunate to work with amazing colleagues who contribute 10x more than previously seemed possible. That's what I love most about this company. And even more amazingly, for the first time we're seeing the tools themselves become 10x more powerful. I've seen many of these people approach incredible tasks we wouldn't have even wanted to tackle before, with thoughtful and brilliant use of AI, to do 100x more work.
In my "On Leadership" memo years ago, I described Shopify as a Red Queen race based on the story from Alice in Wonderland — you have to keep running just to stay in place. In a company growing 20–40% year over year, you have to improve by at least that much each year just to requalify. That goes for me and for everyone else.
That sounds daunting, but given the nature of the tools, it doesn't even feel particularly ambitious to me anymore. It's also exactly the environment our best employees tell us they want. Shared learning, surrounded by people who are also on their own personal growth journey and working on valuable, meaningful, and difficult problems — that's exactly the environment Shopify has created. This represents both an opportunity and a requirement, deeply tied to our core values of "Be a constant learner" and "Thrive on change." These aren't just aspirational phrases — they're core expectations that come with being part of this world-class team. That's what we founders wanted and what we built.
What This Means
Effective use of AI is now a baseline expectation for everyone at Shopify. Today it's a tool for every profession, and its importance will only grow. Frankly, I don't think it's possible to avoid learning the skill of using AI in your field; you can try, but I want to be honest — I don't see that working today, and certainly not tomorrow. Stagnation is nearly certain, and stagnation is slow failure. If you're not moving up, you're sliding down.
AI must be part of your GSD (Get Stuff Done) prototype phase. The prototype phase of any GSD project should be driven by AI exploration. Prototypes are meant for learning and gathering information. AI dramatically accelerates this process. You can learn to produce something that other team members can look at, use, and think about in a fraction of the time it used to take.
We'll be adding questions about AI use to our performance review and peer review questionnaires. Learning to use AI well is a non-intuitive skill. My sense is that many people give up after writing a prompt and not immediately getting an ideal result. Learning to formulate prompts and load context is important, and getting peer feedback on how it's going will be valuable.
Learning is individual, but share what you've learned. You have access to as many top-tier AI tools as possible. We have chat.shopify.io, which we've had for years. Developers have a proxy, Copilot, Cursor, Claude code, all pre-configured and ready to use. We'll learn and adapt as a team. We'll share successes (and failures!) in experimenting with new AI capabilities and will dedicate time to AI integration in our monthly business reviews and product development cycles. Slack and Vault have plenty of places where people share prompts they've developed, like #revenue-ai-use-cases and #ai-centaurs.
Before asking for more headcount and resources, teams must demonstrate why they can't achieve what they want using AI. What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team? That question can lead to really interesting conversations and projects.
Everyone means everyone. This applies to all of us — including me and the executive team.
The Path Forward
AI will completely transform Shopify, our work, and the rest of our lives. We're all in this together! I couldn't imagine a better place to be a part of this truly unprecedented change than right here. Not only do you have a front-row seat, but you're surrounded by an entire company that is learning and moving things forward together.
Our job is to figure out what business looks like in a world where AI is universally available. And I intend to do the best possible thing for that — and for that I need everyone's help. I've already outlined many AI projects in this year's themes — our plan is clear and our product will better match our mission. For success we need our collective overall skill and ambition in applying our craft, multiplied by AI, in service of our merchants.
-tobi, CEO Shopify
agency in CZ and SK
