Welcome to the Moast newsletter. We spend the week collecting news, trends, and other content that we think would be interesting to e-commerce founders and CMOs. Our goal is to provide value without sounding like a promo for our app. Helpful wether you use Moast or not.

Spotify is rolling out a "Verified by Spotify" badge to help listeners tell human artists apart from AI-generated ones. To qualify, artists need an identifiable presence on and off platform like concert dates, merch, social accounts plus consistent listener engagement over time. AI-persona profiles don't qualify.

At launch, 99%+ of artists people actively search will be verified. It's a small feature with a big implication: authenticity is becoming a product differentiator, not just a value.

Here's what else caught our attention in the world of e-commerce this week 👇

1/ DTC Headlines

Wayfair is winning market share in the hardest category in retail

-> Q1 revenue up 7.4% in the U.S. to $2.9B while the overall home furnishings category contracted in the low single digits.

-> Wayfair outperformed the market by a high-single-digit spread -- CEO Niraj Shah says share gains are "accelerating."

-> Still losing money ($105M net loss), but a brand growing faster than a shrinking category is hard to ignore.

How Wayfair is pulling away from the competition in a category nobody wants to be in →

H&M launches its first U.S. curated marketplace storefront -- on Nordstrom

-> H&M's first curated retail marketplace launch in the U.S. puts it on Nordstrom.com with women's, men's, kids', and H&M Move.

-> It's a true marketplace model -- H&M manages fulfillment, Nordstrom handles returns and loyalty benefits.

-> The goal: reach Nordstrom's fashion-forward, high-engagement audience without the cost of new store openings.

What H&M's Nordstrom bet says about the future of marketplace strategy →

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a brand collab masterclass

-> 14 official brand partners including L'Oreal Paris, Starbucks, Google, Samsung, Diet Coke, Lancôme, and Mercedes-Benz.

-> L'Oreal's Oscars-timed campaign with Kendall Jenner and Simone Ashley reportedly drove the most cultural buzz of the bunch.

-> The takeaway: film IP is one of the last brand awareness channels that cuts through at scale. The question is how to execute it.

Ranking every Devil Wears Prada 2 brand collab →

Big Tech's Q1 earningspalooza: $700B in AI capex and strong beats across the board

-> Alphabet up 22% revenue to $109.9B; Google Cloud grew 63%. Amazon AWS grew 28%. Meta beat but raised capex to $125-145B.

-> Combined capex from the four hyperscalers is heading toward $650-700B for 2026 -- the AI infrastructure arms race is on.

-> The commercial implication: the more they spend, the cheaper and faster AI gets for everyone building on top of it.

What Big Tech's Q1 results mean for the AI infrastructure era →

X rebuilds its entire ad platform from scratch using xAI

-> X describes it as the most ambitious overhaul of its ad ecosystem in 20 years -- a full stack rebuild, not a UI refresh.

-> New AI-powered retrieval and ranking systems replace static targeting with semantic, contextual ad delivery.

-> Ad revenue is recovering ($2.46B projected for 2026), and this is the bet that it keeps growing.

What X's full ad platform rebuild means for brands still advertising there →

Williams-Sonoma relaunches Dormify to go after Gen Z college shoppers

-> Dormify 2.0 launches with a new website, 3D bed visualizer, curated checklists, and a Pick-Up Near Campus program via 450+ WSI stores.

-> WSI acquired the IP for $1M after Dormify filed for bankruptcy in 2024 -- now it's their 10th brand.

-> The play: catch Gen Z at the moment they first furnish their own space, before they become a West Elm or Pottery Barn customer.

Why Williams-Sonoma bought a bankrupt dorm brand and bet $1M on Gen Z →

2/ Shopify

Whatnot integrates with Shopify to bring live commerce to millions of merchants

-> Shopify merchants can now sync products, inventory, and orders automatically to Whatnot -- no duplicate catalogs, no manual tracking.

-> 30 beta merchants already drove $10M+ in sales across nearly 20 categories using the integration.

-> Sellers on Whatnot move 10x more volume than on other major marketplaces -- and U.S. sellers going live daily earn $69K/month on average.

Why Whatnot's Shopify integration could finally make live commerce mainstream for brands →

3/ What We Found Interesting

What Walmart's annual report says about where e-commerce is actually heading

-> Global e-commerce grew 24% at Walmart in fiscal 2026. That's not a trend, that's structural.

-> The report breaks down how Walmart is thinking about e-commerce and AI investments together, not separately.

-> Worth reading if you want a ground-level view of where the largest retailer in the world is placing its bets.

What Walmart's 2026 annual report reveals about the future of retail →

Shopify's AI toolkit: real merchant use cases

-> A practical look at how Shopify merchants are actually using the new AI Toolkit -- not theory, not demos, actual use cases.

-> Covers product recommendations, semantic search, conversational shopping, and more.

-> If you're building on Shopify or thinking about it, this is the most grounded guide available right now.

How real Shopify merchants are using the AI Toolkit →

4/ What We Found Helpful

Adidas is "defending newness" as discounts eat the sneaker market

-> Q1 revenue up 14% currency-neutral to €6.6B, but CEO Gulden is worried about the discount spiral hitting lifestyle footwear.

-> Strategy: hold back new product from wholesale when multi-brand retail is running 20% off everything around it.

-> DTC up 15% vs. wholesale up 2% -- and Adidas is leaning harder into DTC to protect full-price integrity.

What Adidas' "defend newness" strategy says about the discount era in retail →

Kohl's built an AI gift finder with Google Cloud for Mother's Day

-> The conversational agent is powered by Gemini Enterprise and lets shoppers find personalized gift ideas by hobby, interest, and style.

-> Shoppers can upload images to find similar products and add to cart without ever leaving the chat.

-> Kohl's also built an internal analytics tool for employees -- the AI investment is going both ways.

How Kohl's is using conversational AI to turn gift shopping from a chore into a conversation →

Why Tokyo is the most important tech destination of 2026

-> SusHi Tech Tokyo just wrapped -- 60,000 attendees, 750 startups, 10,000 facilitated business meetings.

-> Four focused tracks: AI, robotics, resilience, and entertainment -- with live demos, not keynote decks.

-> Worth knowing about if you're watching where the next wave of commerce and physical AI is coming from.

Why the world's most important tech conference right now is in Tokyo →

Elon Musk and Sam Altman spent a week in court -- here's what happened

-> Musk spent three days on the stand claiming he donated $38M to a nonprofit and got a trillion-dollar company built for someone else.

-> Altman's team argued Musk left the board when he couldn't take control, then started xAI as a competitor.

-> Altman and Brockman haven't testified yet. The trial resumes next week.

The biggest takeaways from week one of Musk vs. Altman →