Shopify has acquired New York City-based design firm Molly Studio for an undisclosed sum and launched an internal design studio as it looks to bolster its product design team.
All seven of Molly Studio’s designers will join Shopify as founding members of its new Product Design Studio, chief design officer Carl Rivera said in a video posted on X. The studio will operate as an “internal agency,” Rivera said, where software product design leads at Shopify will act as clients, help scope out projects, and turn around finished designs in two to three months.
“We’re entering the most disruptive era yet—everyone will use the same AI models, but design is what differentiates how they come to life.”
Carl Rivera
Shopify
The e-commerce company is also planning to open a new New York City office in late September, according to another post from Rivera. A Shopify spokesperson told BetaKit that it has had an office there for a number of years, and is a “digital-first company” that also values in-person work.
Rivera, who previously led the product team for merchant services and the Shop app, added that the studio is not meant to replace teams, but to add “energy, creativity, and momentum” to their projects.
“We’re entering the most disruptive era yet—everyone will use the same AI models, but design is what differentiates how they come to life,” Rivera wrote in an announcement on X.
The Shopify spokesperson added that the Product Design Studio will leverage AI in their projects and will work on “the ways that AI can be used to further commerce.”
Shopify was a previous client of Molly’s. The firm has also worked with brands such as Apple, Nike, and Google. Half of Molly’s projects over the past two years have been AI-related, the design firm claimed, adding that it has developed internal frameworks and strategies for how AI and product and design teams should work together.
The acquisition comes as Shopify seeks to become an “AI-first” company. CEO Tobi Lütke released an internal memo in April stating that AI use is now a “baseline expectation” at the company, and employees will have to demonstrate that AI can’t help them before asking for more resources or staff.
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In line with this strategy, Shopify rolled out AI-powered design tools for merchants. Its chatbot tool Sidekick now allows Shopify store owners to create custom websites using AI prompts to customize their store content and layouts. The e-commerce giant also acquired San Jose, Calif.-based AI-powered retailer search startup Vantage Discovery in March.
“Shopify is the repository for most of the world’s SKUs [stock keeping units],” which are bar codes that identify specific products, Molly co-founders Marvin Schwaibold and Jaytel wrote in a statement on Molly’s website. “This, we believe, will become increasingly valuable as individual applications become less relevant and actions (especially commerce) take place inside AI interactions.”
AI chatbot developer OpenAI has reportedly been working on embedding checkout and payments into ChatGPT, according to the Financial Times, with Shopify’s technology potentially playing a role.
During Shopify’s Q2 earnings call this month, an investor asked about the reported collaboration. Shopify president Harley Finkelstein said he wouldn’t discuss the product roadmap, but that the company is “actively working on new opportunities and partnerships.”
Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.
Feature image courtesy Burst.