“Increasingly, I’m coming back to running product and working with the vice president of tech on some artificial intelligence (AI) projects and getting very hands-on myself,” says Wolf & Badger CEO and co-founder George Graham.
“It’s intellectually challenging, stimulating and intriguing – and I want to learn more about it. I’m trying to get as much info as I can on what I consider to be the most interesting tech advancement of my professional work lifetime.”
Not the words of a head of engineering, CIO, or technology executive, but those of the CEO of the online marketplace, whose business world continues to be lit up by the opportunity to use AI across multiple operations.
And why not? In January 2026, Wolf & Badger released a performance update to mark 15 years of trading, reporting it had now surpassed $500m in cumulative sales since inception and achieved almost 40 million website visits in 2025 alone, while reinforcing its reputation as an ethical platform by securing B-Corp recertification.
Wolf & Badger partners with independent brands promising strong ethics, and effectively becomes their tech stack and online operations provider. It is the conduit for these brands to achieve the scale that few organisations of their size can achieve alone.
The business achieved annual sales of $100m (£75m) in 2024, with more than 2,000 brand partners now in place, helping the London-headquartered operation grow globally. And ongoing investment in “AI-driven discovery and on-site personalisation” is delivering a measurable impact, with the company talking about £3.2m of directly attributable incremental sales from recent AI initiatives.
“There’s tremendous opportunity to improve the efficiency and discovery on Wolf & Badger by better understanding our shoppers and our brands and the products they sell,” he says.
“There’s lots around AI on image recognition and product tagging to build out better information related to style or what event a product would be suitable for, and using that to surface more relevant products to the user at the right time – all with the end point of making life more exciting and creating inspirational shopping experiences.”
Are we all product managers now?
While the work on using AI to power the online experience is not uncommon in e-commerce today, Graham’s attitude as CEO of the marketplace is. He is a CEO getting his hands dirty with the tech, which is rare in retail.
“I have personally spent many hundreds of hours over the past three months getting my head around AI and the future of commerce – with agentic commerce in mind,” he explains.
I have personally spent many hundreds of hours over the past three months getting my head around AI and the future of commerce – with agentic commerce in mind George Graham, Wolf & Badger
“Claude Code has become my go-to app. I have built a fairly bespoke AI agent ‘chief of staff’ that is connected to my tools via MCPs [model context protocols] or APIs [application programming interfaces], with a bunch of bespoke skills and scripts that I have ended up building into that.”
Graham says the collective memory stack is getting more powerful by the day, and using it has improved his own working practices.
“I feel twice as efficient as I was six months ago. I have taken that time and – in the short term – continued reinvesting it in understanding AI.”
The AI assistant Graham has developed is being made accessible via Stack internally, and the wider team is getting set up on Claude Code themselves with access to their own version.
The CEO acknowledges he isn’t an engineer or coder, but as a teenager, he would make games in Basic (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) and design websites with HTML. After studying business at university, he joined PwC as a strategy consultant. By the age of 23, he was starting Wolf & Badger and “had to figure out how to build a marketplace as there wasn’t really marketplace software out there”.
When development at Wolf & Badger was brought in-house – today, it has a vice-president of technology, around a dozen people in engineering and others in product management and design – Graham continued to play a part in building out features to support brand partners and customers.
“I have always found all that fascinating,” he explains.
“Over the years, I stepped away as we brought the experts in – but, increasingly, I’m coming back to running product and working with our vice-president of tech on some of the AI projects and getting very hands-on myself.”
Graham, who founded Wolf & Badger with his brother Henry in 2010, admits he doesn’t fully understand the finer nuances of coding and doesn’t have the experienced engineer’s eye. But with the new tech available, he suggests “anyone can be a product manager or software developer” now.
“I have been able to create prototypes – I have built things that assess brands coming on the platform and help the sustainability team with vetting,” he says.
The software his internal teams are now using is set up on GitHub, and built on Eversell MSL front-end, Superbase, and other apps. “Everything is hooked up in what I think is reasonably robust for internal use,” he adds.
He urges other leaders in retail and wider business not to be afraid, and to experiment with the tools now available. There’s a lot that can be built on just a small monthly tech subscription outlay, he notes.
The wider tech team at Wolf & Badger initially experimented with solutions such as Microsoft Copilot and then Cursor.
“Only in the past few months have our engineers found the quality is at a point where they can lean on it more to start actually writing code. We’re keeping clear of the vibe coding in key sensitive areas, of course, but we can experiment in lots of spaces.”
The tech exploration work Graham has taken on – and there is much more to come, he says – is to “ready ourselves for agentic commerce and make sure we’re ahead of the pack”.
Since the turn of the year, there have already been some noteworthy developments in agentic commerce that further underline it as a future direction of travel for e-commerce and, therefore, something e-commerce and retail leaders must better grasp an understanding of.
Agentic commerce and UCP
The new year started with JD Sports announcing it is enabling consumers to use AI platforms to search for and purchase products – all in a single click, without leaving the apps.
JD customers in the US can purchase directly through Copilot, and – in due course – this will be followed by the ability to do so via Google Gemini and ChatGPT. JD is leveraging the agentic commerce suite of tech players Commercetools and Stripe.
Jetan Chowk, JD’s chief technology and transformation officer, said the move was about meeting customers “where they are”. It came after OpenAI announced in September that US shoppers could buy from Etsy directly through ChatGPT.
It started with an “instant checkout” to support single-item purchases, but multi-item carts are now on their way to being a reality.
Then, at the January 2026 NRF Big Show in New York, where many from the retail technology community congregate every year, Google launched the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard for agentic commerce that aims to establish a common language for AI agents and systems to operate together across consumer surfaces, businesses and payment providers.
The work Stripe is doing with agentic commerce protocol and standardising the mechanism by which people can shop directly via the [AI] agents is super interesting George Graham, Wolf & Badger
This is a fast-moving space, but was co-developed with prominent retail industry players such as Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart, and endorsed by more than 20 others across the ecosystem, including payments companies Adyen, American Express, MasterCard and Visa.
Graham is in close conversations with Stripe and Google, attending their events and regularly tuning into their updates.
“The work Stripe is doing with agentic commerce protocol and standardising the mechanism by which people can shop directly via the agents is super interesting,” he says. “Google and Shopify UCP is a further move towards a standardisation of how this is going to work.”
Graham is confident there will be more consumer discovery conducted on Google’s AI-powered platforms, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other similar spaces.
“We need to ensure we’re supporting the 2,000 brands we’re working with to appear in the right way on those channels and facilitate the tech that can support one- or zero-click checkout, where an agent has the ability to buy on a consumer’s behalf.”
He is confident that a platform such as Wolf & Badger can play a key role in the agentic space. Individual brands are typically going to struggle to really build out the right metadata and set up UCP to be recognised by the human in the loop or an AI agent.
Graham says: “If we can wrap together the best independent brands and collectively go to a shopping agent to ensure those brands appear in the right places, we’re well placed to capture some of that demand and drive it towards the individual brands we work with, rather than the resulting purchases ending up with the bigger homogenised brands in our space.”
He adds that Wolf & Badger’s presence harks back to the pre-digital days of boutique shopping in-store, but with the right technology investment and focus now, it can deliver this in a “scaled way” online and through its showrooms.
“Our editorial and marketing team still make the creative calls, but we’re able to drive it forward with some of these new bits of tech,” he says, adding that as Wolf & Badger extends its technological nous, it can enable its brands to focus on “the difficult part” of commerce – meaning the design and manufacturing of compelling garments and consumer products.
Rapidly evolving space
As for the immediate future at Wolf & Badger, the US expansion is a key focus – as are ventures across Europe and into the Middle East. An expanded brand partnerships function within the business is expected to support the onboarding of new designers from around the world.
But AI continues to be an area of significant exploration, with Graham confident that his experimentation and use of cost-effective tools are improving how the business operates.
“It’s a rapidly evolving space – everything is changing these days,” he says, adding that it’s getting increasingly difficult to understand what will come next due to the acceleration of technological capability.
“You just have to try to stay ahead,” he says. “We’re repositioning ourselves in making sure we are embracing AI in the way I think any forward-thinking growth company should, and recognising the power it can bring to enable us to do much more for our brands and shoppers.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is still in the hot seat this week after his company signed a deal with the US military. OpenAI employees have criticized the move, which came after Anthropic’s roughly $200 million contract with the Pentagon imploded, and asked Altman to release more information about the agreement. Altman admitted it looked “sloppy” in a social media post.
While this incident has become a major news story, it may just be the latest and most public example of OpenAI creating vague policies around how the US military can access its AI.
In 2023, OpenAI’s usage policy explicitly banned the military from accessing its AI models. But some OpenAI employees discovered the Pentagon had already started experimenting with Azure OpenAI, a version of OpenAI’s models offered by Microsoft, two sources familiar with the matter said. At the time, Microsoft had been contracting with the Department of Defense for decades. It was also OpenAI’s largest investor, and had broad license to commercialize the startup’s technology.
That same year, OpenAI employees saw Pentagon officials walking through the company’s San Francisco offices, the sources said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity as they aren’t licensed to comment on private company matters.
Some OpenAI employees were wary about associating with the Pentagon, while others were simply confused about what OpenAI’s usage policies meant. Did the policy apply to Microsoft? While sources tell WIRED it was not clear to most employees at the time, spokespeople from OpenAI and Microsoft say Azure OpenAI products are not, and were not, subject to OpenAI’s policies.
“Microsoft has a product called the Azure OpenAI Service that became available to the US Government in 2023 and is subject to Microsoft terms of service,” said spokesperson Frank Shaw in a statement to WIRED. Microsoft declined to comment specifically on when it made Azure OpenAI available to the Pentagon, but notes the service was not approved for “top secret” government workloads until 2025.
“AI is already playing a significant role in national security and we believe it’s important to have a seat at the table to help ensure it’s deployed safely and responsibly,” OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois said in a statement. “We’ve been transparent with our employees as we’ve approached this work, providing regular updates and dedicated channels where teams can ask questions and engage directly with our national security team.”
The Department of Defense did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
By January 2024, OpenAI updated its policies to remove the blanket ban on military use. Several OpenAI employees found out about the policy update through an article in The Intercept, sources say. Company leaders later addressed the change at an all-hands meeting, explaining how the company would tread carefully in this area moving forward.
In December 2024, OpenAI announced a partnership with Anduril to develop and deploy AI systems for “national security missions.” Ahead of the announcement, OpenAI told employees that the partnership was narrow in scope and would only deal with unclassified workloads, the same sources said. This stood in contrast to a deal Anthropic had signed with Palantir, which would see Anthropic’s AI used for classified military work.
Palantir approached OpenAI in the fall of 2024 to discuss participating in their “FedStart” program, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed to WIRED. The company ultimately turned it down, and told employees it would’ve been too high-risk, two sources familiar with the matter tell WIRED. However, OpenAI now works with Palantir in other ways.
Around the time the Anduril deal was announced, a few dozen OpenAI employees joined a public Slack channel to discuss their concerns about the company’s military partnerships, sources say and a spokesperson confirmed. Some believed the company’s models were too unreliable to handle a user’s credit card information, let alone assist Americans on the battlefield.
Though most people associate the beginning of March with the hopefulness of spring and the indignities of daylight saving time, there’s another important event taking place yards all over the country: hummingbird season.
While many species of hummingbirds can be seen in regions year-round, others are migratory, and this time typically marks their return from wintering grounds in Central and South America. These tiny birds can lose up to 40 percent of their body weight by the time they arrive here after having flown thousands of miles, and since many flowers haven’t bloomed yet, nectar feeders can be a source of essential fuel.
Though I test smart bird feeders year-round, I don’t use hummingbird feeders as often as I should, as it’s imperative that they be cleaned and refilled with new nectar every two or three days (a ratio of 1:4 granulated sugar to water is best, and avoid any dyes or additives) to prevent deadly bacteria and mold, and I don’t always have the time.
But if you are going to invest the energy in maintaining a hummingbird feeder, right now is the best time, as you have a chance to see migratory species you might not otherwise encounter, such as black-chinned hummingbirds. A smart feeder helps you ID them, whether they’re stopping at your feeder on their way north or arriving at their final destination.
Birdbuddy’s Pro is the smart hummingbird feeder I recommend and use myself when I’m not actively testing. The app is easy to navigate and sends cleaning reminders, the built-in solar roof keeps the battery charged, and, unlike other feeders, only the shallow bottom screws off for refilling. No having to pour sticky nectar through a narrow opening, or turn a giant cylinder upside down and risk spilling.
Note that it’s not perfect; the sensor is inconsistent and doesn’t capture every hummingbird that visits, but for the camera quality (5 MP photos, 2K video with slow-motion, 122-degree field of view) and ease of use, it’s a foible I’m willing to put up with. If you already have another Birdbuddy feeder, the hummingbird feeder images and videos will integrate seamlessly into your app feed.
Birdbuddy
Pro Smart Solar Hummingbird Feeder
Right now, the feeder is 37 percent off on Birdbuddy’s website—a deal I usually don’t see outside of shopping events like Black Friday or Amazon Prime Day. Note that the feeder only runs on 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi, and while it is fully functional without a subscription, a Birdbuddy Premium subscription will let you add friends and family members to your account so they can see the birds as well. That’s $99 a year through the app.
President Donald Trump announced in a Truth Social post on Thursday that Noem would be replaced by senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, a staunch Trump ally and immigration hardliner. “The current Secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!), will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas, our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere we are announcing on Saturday in Doral, Florida,” Trump wrote. “I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland.’”
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Speculation has swirled around Noem’s departure for months. Critics have assailed DHS’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics, while Noem and figures like White House border czar Tom Homan have reportedly been at odds over how to execute the administration’s mass deportation agenda, with Noem and senior adviser Corey Lewandowski said to have emphasized sheer numbers of arrests and deportations above other considerations.
The relationship between Noem and Lewandowski has itself been a subject of controversy, with CNN reporting that a September meeting between the two and president Donald Trump grew “contentious.” Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that Lewandowski attempted to fire a pilot during a flight for failing to bring Noem’s blanket from one plane to another during a transfer.
The ousted secretary faced mounting scrutiny over the deaths of US citizens during federal operations in Minneapolis, including the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents under Noem’s employ. In both cases, Noem publicly labeled the deceased “domestic terrorists,” framing echoed by Trump and other key administration officials. Video evidence, witness testimony, and an independent autopsy contradicted the agency’s claims, including early assertions that Pretti brandished a firearm.
Scrutiny of Noem’s tenure extends beyond the fatal shootings in Minneapolis to a broader pattern of aggressive enforcement tactics, warrantless raids, and mass detention camps. A secretive policy directive issued in May 2025, first reported by the Associated Press, authorized ICE agents to forcibly enter private residences without a judicial warrant. The memo, signed by acting ICE director Todd Lyons, instructed agents to rely solely on an administrative removal document to bypass Fourth Amendment requirements. The policy led to multiple documented instances of federal agents entering the wrong homes, including a January raid in Minnesota where agents removed a US citizen at gunpoint with no legitimate reason.
A record 53 people died in ICE or CBP custody last year, according to House Democrats on the Committee on Homeland Security. Concurrently, Noem has initiated a $38 billion procurement effort to buy and refurbish up to 24 warehouses across the country, aimed at converting them into mass detention camps for people awaiting deportation.
Noem’s tenure has led to controversy at other DHS agencies as well. Her insistence on approving any contracts or grants over $100,000 at the department have caused particular strain at FEMA, which has experienced a massive backlog of funding that has slowed normal processes at the agency. A report issued from Senate Democrats Wednesday found that Noem’s vetting process at FEMA has caused more than 1,000 contracts, grants, and awards to be held up. Multiple FEMA employees have told WIRED that this process has made the agency less ready to respond to disasters and threats.
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