AI Articles and Analysis about E-commerce

The COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed how consumers shop, driving more consumers than ever to transact online with traditionally brick-and-mortar retailers. While these economic forces have affected all retail, perhaps none was more profoundly disrupted than the grocery sector.

There’s more to successful AI adoption than picking the right technology. Business leaders should be aware of the technical requirements of the initiative they’re undertaking, and few of those requirements are as important as data.

The company that would become eBay was founded as a sole proprietorship under the name AuctionWeb in September 1995 by Pierre Omidyar. The company changed its name to eBay in September 1997. The company reports selling just over $7 million in goods before being a California-registered corporation in May 1996.

Per Alibaba’s annual report, its revenue in 2021 exceeded 717 billion yuan (approximately 109 billion U.S. dollars), while its active yearly customers reached nearly 1.3 billion people. As of March 2022, Alibaba trades on the NYSE and has an approximate market cap of $225 billion.

The company that would become PayPal Holdings first entered the electronic payments space in 1999, a year after being founded as Confinity. Confinity merged with Elon Musk’s x.com in 2000 and was renamed PayPal the following year. The company went public in 2002 shortly before its acquisition by eBay, through which it became “the site’s official payments provider.” eBay spun off PayPal as an independent company in 2015.

American Express began as a freight forwarding company in the mid-19th century. Expanding over time to include financial products and travel services, American Express today reports some 114 million cards in force and $1.2 trillion in billed business worldwide. 

Square is a financial services company that aims to “build common business tools in unconventional ways so more people can start, run and grow their businesses.” Founded in 2009 in San Francisco by Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey, Square reports total net revenue of $9.5 billion for 2020.

Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world by market cap. Founded in 1994 in Seattle, Washington, as a book-selling platform, Amazon has become a household name offering a wide variety of products and services. As of 2020, online retail product sales account for most of the company's net revenues, followed by third-party retail seller services, Amazon Web Services, and subscription services.