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Shein: Gen Z has a new favorite shopping app

Shein: Gen Z has a new favorite shopping app

David Crowther

Faster fashion

‍Gen Z has a new favorite shopping app — Shein.

The company, founded in 2008 in China, has exploded into the world of fast fashion, with Google data showing it's surpassed other brands like H&M, Zara and ASOS in terms of search interest. It's also held the second spot in the iOS App Store Shopping category for much of this year, even overtaking Amazon briefly.

‍Shein x TikTok

‍Shein makes the world of fast fashion, pioneered in the late 90s by Zara, H&M and others, look glacial. "Fast fashion" meant that designs from fashion shows and runways could make it into stores in just a few weeks. Shein takes this a step further. If a top or garment design goes viral on TikTok, Shein can ramp up production almost instantly thanks to its tight control of production, and relatively small initial batches of items. That supply chain, coupled with super-low prices and endless virality on TikTok, is a powerful feedback loop.

The sheer scale and speed of Shein's operations are quite hard to get your ahead around. Its website has a feature that lets you filter which products arrived on the site by which day (there are no physical Shein stores). 8,895 products were added yesterday. 9,634 were added the day before.

‍Secrets and sustainability

‍Shein reportedly racked up more than $10bn of sales last year, but otherwise relatively little is known about the company, its operations, its owners or how sustainable its production is. Its supply chain is impressive, but not very transparent.

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Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind’s CEO and founder, was also an early Anthropic investor

A chess prodigy and an actual a knight of the realm in the UK, it’s perhaps no surprise that Demis Hassabis has made some strategic moves about his exposure to AI upside. According to people familiar with the matter, the influential AI architect became an angel investor in Anthropic, currently behind many of the leading AI models, per Arena AI leaderboards.

The Nobel Prize winner’s position in the Claude creator was previously undisclosed and, per the Financial Times, highlights Hassabis’ “growing influence across the AI industry.”

Google, which bought DeepMind, the company that Hassabis cofounded and heads to this day, for a reported ~$400 million in 2014, is also a key Anthropic investor. The tech giant reportedly plans to invest up to $40 billion in the AI company as part of the mutually beneficial relationship the pair have forged, with reports that Anthropic has committed to spending $200 billion in the other direction on Google’s cloud services over the next five years.

I’m playing all sides, so I always come out on top

In addition to his financial support for Anthropic, Hassabis has also invested in a range of AI startups launched by colleagues, such as Inflection AI, a company set up by DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman (who is now CEO of Microsoft AI), as well as efforts from other collaborators, like David Silver’s Ineffable Intelligence.

Hassabis also emerged as a recurring figure on the fringes of the recent Elon Musk v. Sam Altman trial, cropping up repeatedly in testimonies and court documents and appearing to live, as The Verge put it, “rent-free” in Musk’s head.

Founded in 2021, Anthropic has recently raised funding at a reported $900 billion valuation, sending it soaring ahead of competitor OpenAI.

Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis emerges as early Anthropic investor

Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis emerges as early Anthropic investor

The Nobel Prize winner’s position in the Claude creator was previously undisclosed and, per the Financial Times, highlights Hassabis’ “growing influence across the AI industry.”

Google, which bought DeepMind, the company that Hassabis cofounded and heads to this day, for a reported ~$400 million in 2014, is also a key Anthropic investor. The tech giant reportedly plans to invest up to $40 billion in the AI company as part of the mutually beneficial relationship the pair have forged, with reports that Anthropic has committed to spending $200 billion in the other direction on Google’s cloud services over the next five years.

I’m playing all sides, so I always come out on top

In addition to his financial support for Anthropic, Hassabis has also invested in a range of AI startups launched by colleagues, such as Inflection AI, a company set up by DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman (who is now CEO of Microsoft AI), as well as efforts from other collaborators, like David Silver’s Ineffable Intelligence.

Hassabis also emerged as a recurring figure on the fringes of the recent Elon Musk v. Sam Altman trial, cropping up repeatedly in testimonies and court documents and appearing to live, as The Verge put it, “rent-free” in Musk’s head.

Founded in 2021, Anthropic has recently raised funding at a reported $900 billion valuation, sending it soaring ahead of competitor OpenAI.

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