The head of Shopify’s core product is leaving the company after nearly seven years to join ChatGPT maker OpenAI and lead its app development.
New York City-based Glen Coates, who was vice-president (VP) and head of core product at the Canadian e-commerce giant, announced his new role on social media on Monday. Coates will be the head of OpenAI’s app platform and will be tasked with turning ChatGPT into an operating system, he said.
Coates will be the head of OpenAI’s app platform and will be tasked with turning ChatGPT into an operating system.
“We’re going to find out what happens if you architect an OS ground-up with a genius at its core that can use its apps just like you can,” Coates wrote in a LinkedIn post, where he thanked his Shopify colleagues. “I can’t think of anything more exciting to work on.”
Coates joined Shopify in 2019 as director of product for Shopify Plus—a platform for larger, high-growth merchants—when the firm acquired his e-commerce wholesale startup Handshake, along with its team. He was then made VP and head of core product in 2020, where he has been in charge of Shopify’s main software and app ecosystem.
Coates has previously been the public face of Shopify’s product updates, including its Winter Editions ‘25 in February. Shopify’s most recent updates, released last week, contain over 150 product updates across the platform, many focusing on integrating and improving AI features for sellers. This includes agentic storefronts—an overhaul to Shopify’s AI-powered assistant Sidekick—and automations like a program to send an email to staff once a certain inventory level is reached.
In an email today, Shopify spokesperson Rachael Hensley said Vanessa Lee is now leading product for Shopify. She referred BetaKit to Lee’s LinkedIn post and noted that Lee had taken on the role five months ago, and fully oversaw Shopify’s Winter ’26 Editions.
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Shopify sells e-commerce software solutions to both small businesses and large enterprises. It has a $300-billion CAD market capitalization, sitting narrowly above the Royal Bank of Canada as the country’s most valuable public company.
OpenAI is reportedly in talks to raise $10 billion USD from Amazon, at a valuation over $500 billion USD, as it looks to buy more compute to run the large-language models (LLMs) that power ChatGPT.
Coates’ departure from Shopify comes after a slew of executive turnover at the company. Chief operating officer Kaz Nejatian left the company to become CEO of San Francisco-based real estate tech company Opendoor in September and took his “second-in-command” VP of operations along with him. Shopify general counsel Jess Hertz took Nejatian’s place a month later, and chief revenue officer Bobby Morrison also departed. Shopify also made job cuts in recent months that it said “removed layers that created complexity” and amounted to fewer than 80 people.
Disclosure: BetaKit majority owner Good Future is the family office of two former Shopify leaders, Arati Sharma and Satish Kanwar.
Correction (12/17/25): A previous version of this story referred to Shopify Winter Editions ‘25 instead of Winter Editions ‘26. It has now been updated.
Feature image courtesy Shopify.