Hendrik Laubscher

After 2.5 years of silence my newsletter will be returning first Sunday of May 2024. Sign up to get a download of all the important e-commerce news in a single email. colossal-innovator-5225.ck.page/bca1c8be15 via @convertkit

Gopuff launches exclusive Tom Brady GOAT Gummies supermarketnews.com/grocery-market…

Flipkart may limit its quick commerce expansion to top cities to reduce burn etretail.com/s/g2mmxat via @EtRetail

Xiaohongshu links up with JD.com, Tmall jingdaily.com/posts/xiaohong… via @jingdaily

Gopuff launches on Amazon for ultra-fast delivery tie-up in the UK grocerygazette.co.uk/2025/05/15/gop…

Instacart launches Fizz, a group ordering app for party drinks and snacks - fastcompany.com/91327971/insta…

Uber to buy controlling stake in Turkey's Trendyol GO food delivery business for $700 million reuters.com/markets/deals/…

Alibaba offers 100 million free drinks as instant deliveries hit milestone sc.mp/6c1y9?utm_sour… via @scmpnews

Gopuff Introduces Bulk Shopping progressivegrocer.com/gopuff-introdu…

Amazon’s investing $4B in rural America to expand our delivery network aboutamazon.com/news/transport…

UK's Deliveroo gets $3.6 billion buyout proposal from DoorDash reuters.com/technology/del…

MercadoLibre taking full advantage of China tariffs $MELI

While US E-Commerce overall is slowing down signficiant, grocery e-commerce is growing rapidly. US Grocery Digital Sales are up 23% year to date versus the same period last year. Also home delivery now exceeds store pickup for online orders buff.ly/fUy1sB1

AI OVERPRODUCTION China seeks to commoditize their complements. So, over the following months, I expect a complete blitz of Chinese open-source AI models for everything from computer vision to robotics to image generation. Why? I’m just inferring this from public statements, but their apparent goal is to take the profit out of AI software since they make money on AI-enabled hardware. Basically, they want to do to US tech (the last stronghold) what they already did to US manufacturing. Namely: copy it, optimize it, scale it, then wreck the Western original with low prices. I don’t know if they’ll succeed. But here’s the logic: (1) First, China noticed that DeepSeek’s release temporarily knocked ~$1T off US tech market caps. (2) Second, China’s core competency is exporting physical widgets, more than it is software. (3) Third, China’s other core competency is exporting things at such massive scale that all foreign producers are bankrupted and they win the market. See what they’re doing to German and Japanese cars, for example. (4) Fourth, China is well aware that it lacks global prestige as it’s historically been a copycat. With DeepSeek, becoming #1 in AI is now something they actually consider possibly achievable, and a matter of national pride. (5) Fifth, DeepSeek has gone viral in China and its open source nature means that everyone can rapidly integrate it, down to the level of local officials and obscure companies. And they are doing so, and posting the results for praise on WeChat. (6) Finally, while DeepSeek was obscure before recent events, it’s now a household name, and the founder (Liang Wengfeng) has met both with Xi but also the #2 in China, Li Qiang. They likely have unlimited resources now. So, if you put all that together, China thinks it has an opportunity to hit US tech companies, boost its prestige, help its internal economy, and take the margins out of AI software globally (at least at the model level). They will instead make their money by selling inexpensive AI-enabled hardware of increasing quality, from smart homes and self-driving cars to consumer drones and robot dogs. Basically, China is trying to do to AI what they always do: study, copy, optimize, and then bankrupt everyone with low prices and enormous scale. I don’t know if they’ll succeed at the app layer. But it could be hard for closed-source AI model developers to recoup the high fixed costs associated with training state-of-the-art models when great open source models are available. Last, I agree it’s surprising that the country of the Great Firewall is suddenly the country of open source AI. But it is consistent in a different way, which is that China is just focused on doing whatever it takes to win — even to the point of copying partially-abandoned Western values like open source, which seemed like the hardest thing to adopt. On that point: they did build censorship into the released DeepSeek AI models, but in a manner that’s easily circumvented outside China. So, you might conclude they don’t really care what non-Chinese people are saying outside China in other languages, so long as this doesn’t “interfere with China’s internal affairs.” Anyway —this is an area I’ve been watching, and my reluctant conclusion is that China is getting better at software faster than the West is getting better at hardware.

Woolworths launches new ‘after dark’ delivery businesstech.co.za/news/trending/…

@geoff_ink Agreed

@henlaub would or could - would, probs only dsv, maybe tcg? I doubt anyone would actually want it tho - guess i am more surprised that RTT weren't more aggressive in negotiating their exit - says a lot about Shoprites skills and market presence.

Interesting to see that Shoprite paid R511m to RTT for the 50% of Pingo they didn't own. Decent exit.

@geoff_ink Who else would buy that part of RTT?

@henlaub Surprisingly cheap tbh. wonder why RTT agreed. valuation <napkin maths> of ±ZAR1bn / 1x rev. For reference Walmart paid ZAR180m for the dumpster fire that is/was Onecart.

This is a must read. Alexa+ will have agentic capabilities including buying groceries from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods. It’s free for Prime Members and $19.99 a month for those without Prime. I’m intrigued by what the standalone app experience will be.

"This is a story where the consumer is getting hit every way with inflation, yet incredible treasure hunt in value," SW Retail Advisors president @StaceyRetail says on $TJX earnings.

Yango adds food delivery to its logistics service in Senegal techpoint.africa/2025/02/25/yan…