Shopify's CEO on AI

Shopify’s CEO recently wrote a memo on Twitter, highlighting how reflexive AI usage is now a baseline expectation. Toby Lutke, shared that certain tasks—like translations and large-scale refactoring—are seeing a staggering 100x speedup thanks to AI, vastly improving internal processes.

Here are the key highlights:

• Reflexive AI usage is now a fundamental expectation at Shopify.

• Opting out of AI adoption means risking stagnation—"If you're not climbing, you're sliding."

• AI should dominate the prototype phase of all projects, accelerating learning and iteration.

• AI proficiency and effective prompting skills will be assessed during performance reviews.

• Employees have access to cutting-edge AI tools like Copilot, Cursor, and Claude, and are encouraged to actively experiment.

• Teams must first leverage AI fully before requesting additional resources or headcount.

• This directive applies universally—including to the executive team.

This validates what we at Tesseract Academy have long been saying: AI represents an enormous opportunity for those who act swiftly, but those who don’t risk being left behind. If you’re a senior professional looking to future-proof your career, now’s the time to lead.

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