PLUS: eBay's 3 AI plays, and Claude's 30-min dashboards

Afternoon All, AI has arrived in your shopping cart and it's here to stay. 3 of the worlds top brands are doubling down on AI to accelerate revenue growth and deliver personalised customer experiences. This is just the beginning, brands are moving from pilot schemes to enterprise grade systems that deliver memorable experiences at scale.

How are they doing it and can your company afford not to do the same?

Today's dots:

• Retail giants transform shopping with AI
• eBay reveals AI trust and commerce strategy
• Claude builds dashboards in 30 minutes

How Coke, Nike & Starbucks Redefined Retail with AI

Here's the thing: Global brands are betting big on AI to transform customer experiences, with Coca-Cola's $1.1B Microsoft partnership, Nike's RFID-powered upsells, and Starbucks' Deep Brew system showing what operational scale looks like.

Let's unpack that:

• Coca-Cola built a multilingual Santa bot from Concept to Deployment in 60 days using Azure AI. This custom Santa model had real-time conversations with over a million people in 26 languages across 43 markets. Enabling customers to create personalised snow globes based on info they shared with "Digital Santa". Proof that unique emotional experience at scale is now very possible.
• Coca-Cola's commitment to AI driven progress goes far beyond marketing. As part of a $1.1B investment, the company is analysing drink-mixing data from Freestyle machines worldwide and using it to inform future products. Combine this with social media engagement and purchase history, ad campaigns made specifically for you are not far away.
• Nike are masters at mass brand communication. Now imagine this power being harnessed and directed at individual shoppers. Nike's stores now recognise shoppers via RFID. As a result shoppers are given personalised recommendations based on their own preferences and generic ad campaigns. So far this has driven a 22% sales increase.
• Their Nike Fit feature solves the 'wrong shoe size' problem plaguing 60% of customers through smartphone scans. The technology captures 13 visual data points using smartphone cameras to create accurate 3D foot models.
• Starbucks Deep Brew crunches data from 100M+ app users to optimise staffing and inventory. Former Chief Operating Officer (COO) Roz Brewer previously said: “Every store in every country has its distinctive personality, on top of other factors like weekday, time of day, temperature, amount of traffic." The system adapts menu boards in real-time using these, individual purchase histories and thousands of other factors to deliver personalised recommendations, optimise store operations and predict inventory needs.
• So far Deep Brew has contributed to a 30% increase in ROI and a 15% increase in customer engagement.

If you remember nothing else: These aren't just flashy experiments - they're blueprints for AI at enterprise scale. Personalisation engines and operational tweaks delivering double-digit gains today will likely shape mainstream retail tools within 18 months.

eBay's AI Playbook: Behavioural Trust, & Sustainability

Here's the thing: eBay just revealed its 2026 AI strategy with three clear pillars - embedding trust through continuous verification, boosting sustainable shopping through used goods discovery, and supercharging developer productivity. See their full vision here.

Let's unpack that:

• Trust gets a real-time upgrade: Instead of one-time product authentication, AI will continuously verify identities, product conditions, and compliance during transactions. eBay calls this "embedded trust" aimed at making cross-border commerce smoother.
• Second-hand goes first: Their AI aims to make buying used goods easier than ever, letting you snap a photo of an item you want or chat with a conversational agent to magically find alternatives.
• AI turbocharges developers: eBay engineers are already slashing bug-triaging from days to hours using Anthropic's Claude, and they plan to accelerate feature development by feeding company-specific context into AI systems, think custom solutions, not generic tools.

If you remember nothing else: AI's quietly transforming eBay into a trust-first, sustainability-forward marketplace built for real human needs. These aren't hypotheticals, they're operational shifts already making second-hand shopping viable for the Instagram generation. In the future when we all don't have jobs and money is irrelevant, second hand shopping might be the best choice! (Joke...kinda)

Claude's 30-Minute App Builder: From CSV to Live Dashboard

Here's the thing: Anthropic's Claude can now turn messy spreadsheets into interactive dashboards in under 30 minutes through conversational AI.

Let's unpack that:

• The system cuts development time drastically: Founders created revenue trackers and campaign dashboards faster than briefing a developer, using natural language prompts instead of code
• Real-world validation came from practitioners, not theorists: Early adopters in SaaS businesses confirmed they deployed working dashboards for weekly team meetings without engineering support
• Claude iterates like a human designer: You can request layout tweaks ('make it mobile-friendly') or visual changes ('switch to light mode') that get implemented in under a minute per revision
• One-click publishing creates shareable analytics portals: Teams access live dashboards via browser links that update when you feed new CSVs - no redeployment needed
• Pre-built templates now handle core business functions: Track MRR growth, score marketing campaigns, or monitor inventory levels without starting from scratch

If you remember nothing else: This shifts analytics from specialist teams to decision-makers who understand the business context. Expect more 'conversational interfaces' to replace traditional dev workflows for common internal tools.

The Shortlist

NVIDIA leads the AI compute race with $750B revenue projections by 2030, as JP Morgan analysis shows data center spending could 5x – making every third server chip NVDA-powered.

IBM predicts 64% of AI spend will shift from efficiency to innovation by 2030, urging firms to 'weave AI into every decision' using their new Enterprise 2030 framework.

Forrester reveals AI has failed to boost productivity metrics despite $40B data center investments – with 95% of genAI projects showing no ROI in MIT-validated study.

Samsung embeds AI as 'unobtrusive background layer' across appliances and Galaxy devices, betting responsive environments will outperform flashy chatbots in daily utility.