ThredUp CEO says AI costs surprised him but won't curb usage
At the RetailClub AI Festival in California last month, ThredUp CEO James Reinhart said AI implementation costs surprised him but will not slow employee use, even as the company reported Q2 revenue up about 17% to $90.8 million. ThredUp's Q2 operating expenses rose more than 17% to roughly $78.6 million while net loss grew 15% to $5.9 million.
Reinhart noted that the company's token usage has increased faster than he originally anticipated. He argued that slowing employee AI use would be a mistake because the technology will eventually deliver significant cost savings by limiting headcount growth and raising team productivity. To illustrate his commitment, Reinhart showed a slide deck he had never seen before that was generated by Claude and reviewed by his own assistant, calling the exercise an interesting experiment.
“I was both surprised and didn't care at all,” James Reinhart, co-founder and CEO of ThredUp said.
“I'm confident that advancements in AI technology will provide significant cost savings for the business by reducing the need to grow headcount as fast and by helping our teams to be more productive,” James Reinhart, co-founder and CEO of ThredUp said.
The costs of implementing AI across enterprises has surprised some executives in recent months, but ThredUp is pursuing an AI-first strategy. As a public company, Reinhart said at the RetailClub AI Festival that ThredUp just needs to get better at projecting these costs.
What we know
ThredUp's Q2 revenue increased about 17% year over year to $90.8 million
ThredUp's Q2 operating expenses jumped more than 17% to about $78.6 million
ThredUp's net loss grew 15% to $5.9 million
ThredUp's token usage increased faster than he originally envisioned
As a public company, Reinhart said at the RetailClub AI Festival that ThredUp just needs to get better at projecting these costs