This Week in M&A Issue #240
June 8, 2026
Ciao!
Today’s trend of the week is “camping”. ⛺
As the weather warms up, more people are heading outdoors. Shopify sales data shared with Retail Brew shows a sharp rise in demand for camping gear. Orders for walkie-talkie radio sets surged by an impressive 2,012%, while tunnel tents jumped 263%. Air mattresses were up 53%, and family-sized tents increased 34%.
Google searches for “camping” currently sit at 53 million monthly searches worldwide, with a 14% increase over the past year.
This growing interest presents an opportunity to tap into a large and active audience by highlighting camping-related items in your marketing and merchandising.
Content businesses can get in on the trend too. With millions of people searching for camping-related information, there is demand for guides, product reviews, packing checklists, and camping tips that help consumers plan their trips.
Today we have for you:
- ChatGPT becomes the fastest app to reach 1B monthly users
- Amazon Prime Day 2026 dates announced
And:
- Amazon is bringing its AI shopping assistant to other retailers
- Google’s May 2026 Core Update finishes rolling out
- Reddit opens up global Shopify integration
Alright, let’s dive in.
AI
Image Source: Giphy
ChatGPT Hits 1 Billion Users but Gemini Is Catching Up Quickly
OpenAI’s ChatGPT has reached a major adoption milestone: 1 billion monthly active users, making it the fastest app in history to hit that scale.
According to data from Sensor Tower, the milestone was reached in May 2026, roughly three years after ChatGPT launched in 2023. That pace puts it ahead of consumer internet giants like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Google Maps, and Chrome, all of which took between five and eight years to reach the same level of usage.
Monetization is also ramping up. Consumers have spent more than $3 billion in the ChatGPT app since launch, including $2.5 billion in 2025 alone. That’s faster than TikTok and major streaming apps.
Competition is still growing, but remains far behind in absolute numbers. Anthropic’s Claude has around 56 million monthly active users, despite strong year-over-year growth of about 640%.
The main exception is Google’s Gemini. The Gemini app reached 900 million monthly active users in May 2026, narrowing the gap with ChatGPT quickly. Over the four months leading up to May, Gemini grew about 20% in monthly active users. ChatGPT, in a comparable period, grew 12.5% in weekly active users through February 2026.
Different reporting metrics make direct comparison imperfect. Monthly active users and weekly active users are not equivalent. Google is distributing AI through products that already have massive built-in traffic. OpenAI is building ChatGPT as a standalone product, with usage driven by direct engagement and expanding subscription revenue.
The trend is that Gemini is growing quickly from a distribution advantage, while ChatGPT is scaling from product pull and engagement depth.
Amazon
Prime Day 2026 Lands in June as Amazon Targets Everyday Spending
Amazon has confirmed that Prime Day 2026 will run from June 23 to June 26, returning to a four-day format for the second year in a row. The event begins at 12:01 a.m. PT on June 23 and runs through June 26, 2026.
This is the second time Amazon has deliberately moved Prime Day out of its traditional mid-July slot and into June. Moving the event avoids overlap with major global events like the FIFA World Cup and key national holidays, while aligning more closely with peak summer spending when consumers are focused on travel, home upgrades, and seasonal purchases.
Moving Prime Day into June shifts a major revenue driver into the second quarter, changes retailer planning cycles, and compresses the promotional calendar for third-party sellers who rely on the event for a large share of annual sales velocity.
Amazon is also changing how deals are surfaced during the event. A new feature called “Today’s Big Deals” will refresh multiple times a day, creating a more dynamic shopping cycle and encouraging repeat visits throughout the four days.
The four-day format now appears locked in. In July 2025, Amazon expanded Prime Day from two days to four and generated $24.1 billion in sales, exceeding projections.
The scale of the event continues to grow. In 2025, Prime Day drove more than $24 billion in U.S. online spending, making it one of the biggest retail events of the year. Amazon is now extending that momentum with a longer shopping window and deeper category coverage.
ecommerce
Amazon Launches AI Shopping Assistant Tool for Ecommerce Businesses
Amazon just opened up its AI shopping engine to smaller retailers.
Amazon has launched the Agentic Shopping Assistant through AWS, giving ecommerce businesses access to the same AI infrastructure that powers Amazon’s own shopping assistant, formerly known as Rufus and now integrated into Alexa for Shopping.
Instead of building a chatbot or AI search tool from scratch, retailers can use Amazon’s existing framework and customize it with their own product catalog, customer data, business rules, and brand voice.
The assistant allows shoppers to interact using natural language. Rather than typing in keywords, customers can describe what they need, ask questions, compare products, and receive recommendations tailored to their preferences. The AI then guides them through the retailer’s catalog to help them find the best fit.
For small and mid-sized online retailers, this could be a significant opportunity. Product discovery is often one of the biggest points of friction in ecommerce. AI-powered shopping assistants aim to make that process faster, more intuitive, and more personalized.
According to research from Accenture, more than 30% of online commerce could be handled by AI agents by 2030, representing an estimated $3.1 trillion in transactions. Amazon says its internal AI shopping assistants are already linked to billions in extra sales on its platform. By opening up the underlying technology, the company is betting that retailers of all sizes will want similar capabilities.
For smaller ecommerce brands, the interesting part is not that Amazon built another AI tool. It is that technology that was once only available to the largest retailers is becoming accessible to everyone. As AI shopping assistants become more common, the gap between what customers expect and what many online stores currently offer may start to widen.
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Search Rankings Settle as Google Wraps Up May 2026 Core Update
If your search traffic has been jumping around lately, Google says the dust has finally settled, for now.
Google’s May 2026 broad core update finished rolling out on June 2, 2026, according to a post from Google Search Central on X and an update to the Search Status Dashboard.
Google originally announced the update on May 21 at around 11:43 a.m. ET, and the rollout took less than 12 days.
Search Engine Roundtable reported that the update “felt larger” than the previous core update in March 2026, and that ranking volatility appeared at multiple points during the rollout, including major movement in the final 24 hours before Google confirmed completion.
Google recommends waiting at least one full week after rollout completion before analyzing Search Console data, then comparing that week with the week before the update began, putting the earliest clean comparison window around June 9.
The May core update is Google’s fourth confirmed search-related update listed on the dashboard in 2026 and the second core update of the year, arriving about six weeks after March’s completion on April 8.
ecommerce advertising
Shopify Merchants Can Now Run Reddit Ads Globally
Reddit has expanded its Shopify integration globally, making it easier for merchants to run Dynamic Product Ads directly from their store data.
Shopify merchants can now connect their store to Reddit Ads, automatically sync their full product catalog, and install a codeless pixel for conversion tracking. Product details like pricing, images, descriptions, and inventory updates flow straight into Reddit without manual uploads or ongoing maintenance.
Alongside the rollout, Reddit has highlighted new TransUnion research covering retail advertisers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) from 2023 to 2025. The data shows an average 7x return on ad spend for retail campaigns in the region. In North America, Reddit reports more than 2x incremental ROAS compared to typical media plans, translating to roughly $12.52 returned for every $1 spent.
Early Shopify advertisers are already seeing similar results. Apparel brands using Dynamic Product Ads paired with retargeting are reporting ROAS between 4x and 7x, with some campaigns outperforming that range when retargeting is dialed in properly.
Over the past two years, Reddit has been steadily building out its commerce advertising stack, expanding Dynamic Product Ads, adding platform integrations like WooCommerce, and pushing harder into lower-funnel performance marketing. That is now showing up in the numbers, with performance ads driving a growing share of revenue.
For Shopify merchants, the barrier to testing Reddit as a performance channel just dropped. For Reddit, it opens access to a much larger pool of e-commerce inventory and strengthens its position in retail media budgets, especially in EMEA where efficiency is under more scrutiny.
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