Good Morning, Builders.

Today we look at how execution is beating volume, why AI money keeps looping back on itself, and what that means for operators heading into 2026. Let’s get to work.

Shopify had an hours-long outage on Cyber Monday, aka one of the most expensive days of the year to go dark. Starting late morning ET, thousands of merchants couldn’t log into admin accounts or access point-of-sale systems, putting transactions on pause during peak shopping hours. Shopify says the issue stemmed from a login authentication failure and services began recovering by mid-afternoon. When platforms handle 10%+ of U.S. ecommerce, even a few hours of downtime gets very expensive, very fast. (CNBC)

Google just told advertisers it’s expanding access to Custom Segments for certain Display campaigns and then kind of… stopped talking. The update, which goes live Dec. 12, applies only to campaigns restricted by Google’s Personalized Ads policy, not Display across the board. The unanswered questions are: does this crack open targeting for sensitive categories like health? Does it extend to newer formats like Demand Gen? And if it’s a meaningful shift, why the vague memo? (Search Engine Land).

OpenAI is taking an ownership stake in Thrive Holdings, a venture arm started by Thrive Capital (also one of OpenAI’s biggest backers). The pitch is straightforward: place OpenAI engineers inside Thrive-backed companies to accelerate AI adoption, starting with costly, unsexy functions like accounting and IT. What’s raising eyebrows is the structure. OpenAI is getting paid in equity for access to its talent, adding to a growing pattern of circular AI deals where capital, compute, and services loop back on themselves. Supporters call it aligned incentives. Critics call it recycled influence. (Bloomberg)

A Chinese AI startup just shook up the AI race. DeepSeek released two new models, it says will rival GPT-5 and Gemini, and made them free to use. The models perform especially well at math, coding, and long documents, while costing much less to run thanks to a new efficiency trick. DeepSeek also open-sourced everything, making it easy for developers to switch. Powerful AI is getting cheaper, more accessible, and harder for big tech to control. DeepSeek might be making Silicon Valley a little nervous. (Venture Beat)

Instagram is telling employees to come back to the office five days a week starting in February. In an internal memo, chief Adam Mosseri said next year will be “tough” and argued that in-person work improves creativity and speed. Fully remote workers aren’t affected, but hybrid teams will feel the shift. Alongside the mandate, Instagram plans to cut recurring meetings, move faster on decisions, and focus more on building demos than decks. Less Slack, more desks, and higher expectations for Meta employees going into 2026. (San Francisco Chronicle)

After a slow start to winter, Utah’s ski season is officially inching forward. Brighton Resort just set its opening day for early December, joining neighboring Solitude in Big Cottonwood Canyon, which opened on Thanksgiving. Brighton will start small (two runs, limited lifts, terrain park open) while crews keep blasting snow around the clock. More resorts are penciling in early December openings, albeit with plenty of “conditions permitting” caveats. Translation: winter’s still running late, but it’s finally showing up. (The Salt Lake Tribune)

To the Arena,
- Nathan

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