Shopify CTO Mikhail Parakhin lands on TIME's 2026 Tech Executives of the Year list
MParakhin · x · 2026-09-22
Shopify CTO Mikhail Parakhin made TIME's 2026 Executives of the Year: Tech and Data list for rebuilding the commerce platform around AI. Since 2024 he has shipped SimGym, which creates "digital twins" of real shoppers so small stores can run large-retailer-style A/B tests, and co-developed the Universal Commerce Protocol with Google, letting AI agents complete full purchases including taxes and loyalty points — now an industry standard within a year.
Parakhin publicly shares adoption metrics as a recruiting strategy, and the physicist-turned-ML-engineer still does hands-on AI work in his home "cave" every weekend.
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