The New Steam Engine 🚂

Welcome to AI Collision 💥,

In today’s collision between AI and our world:

• AI in the shops
• The 100x force multiplier
• A look back at past polls

If that’s enough to get the revolution industrialising, read on…

AI Collision 💥

While headlines dominate the mainstream media about tariffs, trillions getting wiped from the markets and a tectonic shift in “the old world order” the real shift in our world is unfolding quietly, exponentially, and unstoppably.

The world might be looking over there (at Trump) but I continue to see incredible potential and growth opportunity in the rollout of AI.

Take this I saw yesterday, from Shopify (NASDAQ:SHOP) CEO, Tobi Lütke.

Apparently an internal memo to Shopify had “leaked” so he figure why not just post the whole memo anyway.

It’s worth a look (just follow the X.com link above) but the TL;DR (too long; didn’t read) is that it’s now a requirement of Shopify employees, from the bottom right through to Lütke himself to use AI in their day-to-day roles.

And this comes back to what I’ve been writing about for a while now, that AI is triggering a second industrial revolution.

And the companies that get it, like Shopify, are the ones that will drive economic development and growth over the coming decades.

AI Is the New Steam Engine

Lütke’s memo makes one thing crystal clear: AI isn’t just a tool. It’s a force multiplier.

Where the first industrial revolution decoupled physical labor from muscle power, this one is decoupling cognitive labor from the human brain. As weird as that might sound, it’s nothing to get too dystopian about.

We’re not just using AI to get things done faster, we’re using it to do entirely new things we wouldn’t have dared attempt before, we’re levelling up the ability to look at processes, problems and potential solutions in better, and different ways.

In the memo, Lütke writes:

I’ve seen many of these people approach implausible tasks, ones we wouldn’t even have chosen to tackle before, with reflexive and brilliant usage of AI to get 100X the work done,

This is the productivity explosion that delivers massive growth in companies, and for investors that can see what’s going on.

And as this takes place, the level higher isn’t linear. It’s not marginal. It’s a gigantic leap.

Lütke drops a concept that should be pinned on every knowledge worker’s wall: reflexive AI usage. Not occasional. Not optional. Reflexive. As natural and unconscious as reaching for Google or Slack.

At Shopify, using AI as a researcher, pair programmer, tutor, and strategist isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the baseline expectation now. The memo is clear: opting out means stagnation, and stagnation is just failure in slow motion.

It’s a very direct call-to-arms of the entire Shopify workforce, and something that I expect you’ll see more of in global commerce and trade. In fact dare I say, companies that don’t do it, like Lütke suggests, will stagnate and fall behind.

I think while all the talk of deglobalisation is taking place, and that economies are going to reshore all economic activity, that we’re actually going to see a Cambrian explosion of small businesses and an acceleration of global commerce as AI enables greater and more cost-effective reach, which used to be the advantage of giant multinational conglomerates.

And Shopify wants to be the platform they all build on. And they may very well be that platform that enables everyone to run a large enterprise on the budget and headcount of a small one.

This memo should be studied, circulated, and stamped into investor decks. It’s a glimpse of how AI-native companies are thinking, building, and moving.

We’re not in the experimentation phase anymore. We’re in the redefinition phase. Of work. Of productivity. Of entrepreneurship.

So, while the world argues over tariffs and tit-for-tat geopolitics, the smart money is doing one thing:

Leaning in, learning fast, and building out the second industrial revolution, one AI-powered move at a time.

The largest IPO in history is coming…

Elon Musk’s $180 billion Starlink IPO may launch as soon before the end of May. Most investors will only get in after it goes public – when the big money’s already been made. But you don’t have to wait. Discover a way you could position yourself to potentially profit before the IPO right from your brokerage account with as little as £40.

Capital at risk.

Busters & Busters 💰

AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).

***once again, it’s all about who is heading lower the most. Not a lot to cheer about, but you might almost consider this now a shopping list***

Bust 📉

• Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) down 25%
• Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) down 22%
• XPENG (NYSE:XPEV) down 22%

Bust 📉

• Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) down 18%
• JD.com (NYSE:JD) down 17%
• Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) down 17%

From the hive mind 🧠

• AI is like a brain. Or at least, behaves like a brain in the way it learns and functions. But it can also be used to help and heal human brains. Brains making brains better.
• I wrote about Amazon’s key to making Alexa in the home useful, functional and AI that works. Here’s a little bit more detail on how they do that and achieve AI that works for everyone.
• Google, OpenAI, DeepSeek, xAI Anthropic, Meta, Mistral…it’s a hot race and someone will always be in first. But who? And for how long?

Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️

We’ve been sending out polls regularly with AI Collision and when you vote, that’s wonderful feedback to help us know that you’re reading, listening, paying attention and thinking about all the things we’re writing.

And for me, that point about really critically thinking about the world we’re in, what’s happening now and where we’re headed next is key to maximising the potential of the market and your portfolios long term.

But some other constructive feedback came in the other day saying that we’re not revisiting the results of the polls we’re sending out, like we used to do. And that’s fair.

So, today I’m going to look at some results from our more recent polls, and then going forward on a Monday we’ll look at the results from the previous week, and have new polls on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Now, winding back three editions, I asked how long you think the tariffs from Trump will last.

Interesting that you (and me for that matter) think that most of these are temporary. Whether they last a year or two is somewhat moot, but the fact they do appear to be a short-term tool is the real idea here. And if that’s the case, then when they do disappear, expect the market to rip.

After, we looked at three beaten down bangers, stocks trading at what looks like real value having seen their stock prices ripped lower. And I asked which you thought should be top of the pile?

The winner, Dell, by a healthy percentage margin, with Constellation and then Micron. Interesting that. Not the order I had (I’ll keep my order under wraps for our paid subscribers).

And finally on Monday as the market ripped lower, I wanted to know if you’d been on this rollercoaster before, or maybe this was your first time as an investor seeing global panic rip through markets.

I sit in the middle category too, as many do, that we’ve been here before with other market falls that have been eye-wateringly painful. A healthy chunk of people though where this is the first time on this ride.

What I’d say is, as bad as it feels, you can see these things happen quite a bit over time and will happen again after this. As the dust settles, and things play out, the expectation is the market does head higher again, so don’t fear too much. But know that volatility is always there, even on the way up, and if you embrace the chaos, you can do very well in moments like these.

Weirdest AI image of the day

Kim Jung Un getting attacked by squirrels in his bathroom

ChatGPT’s random quote of the day

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,

Sam Volkering

Editor-in-Chief

AI Collision