Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad had a hard time remembering numbers—giving way to the brand’s famously difficult-to-pronounce products—but one doesn’t become the world’s biggest furniture business without them. In 2025, Ikea, which now has over 500 stores across 63 countries and territories, reported global retail sales of over €44.6 billion (around $52.6 billion).

The brand has created an in-store experience centered around vast showrooms, competitive prices, and, yes, Swedish meatballs. Now, it’s reassembling its strategy around three main elements: new store rollouts, investment in e-commerce, and dynamic partnerships.

A smorgasbord of revenue streams

If you ask Rob Olson, interim CEO of Ikea US, Ikea is not a furniture brand but rather a “concept company.” This is perhaps one explanation for the success of the business famous for its giant blue warehouses, but how does that translate to an e-commerce environment? Olson said he is trying to make Ikea’s online operation feel like the showroom bedrooms and hallways customers are already familiar with.

“If you were to walk into a room set, [you could] find your sofa along with your best TV unit and a Billy bookcase off to the side to complete your solution. We need to be able to do that [on] the web as well,” Olson said.

One of the ways he and his team are making this happen is by implementing AI tools that allow customers to imagine what their room could look like after an Ikea glow-up.

“You can take a photo of your living room, and then you can erase what you have in there, [and] put in a new sofa, etcetera,” Olson said.

Ikea is also pursuing partnerships and collaborations to boost growth, including with TaskRabbit (for at-home furniture assembly), Disney (for pop-up shops), and Best Buy (for in-store crossovers).

“[It’s] about how to take the customer experience to the next level,” Olson said.

Keep reading for expert insight on Ikea’s growth motion.—BS

Been eyeing that buzzy AI platform to help streamline your org? Getting it up and running is easier said than done. Cost, training, and even office politics can stand in the way of uprooting an old system and initiating your dream workflow.

A new report from revenue AI company Gong—which surveyed 2,000 US and UK-based business leaders—shows another roadblock stalling innovation: the “AI trust barrier.” It found that nearly half (46%) of companies’ planned AI investments are currently on pause due to trust concerns. The report also shows that 75% of leaders feel their companies are “falling behind when it comes to realizing AI’s most powerful benefits.”

The report details some of the main concerns contributing to this AI trust barrier:

• Data privacy and security concerns (34%)
• Explainability, or the ability to articulate AI-derived outputs (30%)
• AI model transparency (28%)
• Regulatory uncertainty (27%)

“Security and AI trust are no longer back-office conversations; they are revenue conversations,” said Chris Peake, Gong’s chief trust officer, in a statement. “Gong’s research found that trust can be a performance multiplier when applied as part of an AI strategy.”

Par for the course: Trust issues surrounding AI usage are nothing new. According to a report from Clari + Salesloft released earlier this year, there is a generation gap in AI usage costing companies $56 billion in productivity annually, with baby boomers among those voicing concerns and hesitancy over AI adoption.

Read on for leaders’ top assurances to make AI adoption more comfortable.—LI

This year, IT pros may discover what’s global is also local, as economic uncertainty and worldwide conflicts translate into pinched IT budgets and a growing need to vindicate AI investments.

There has been no shortage of global strife lately. The ongoing US-Israel war with Iran has caused oil prices to jump, with national gas prices reaching over $4 per gallon, up from $3.17 a year ago. Meanwhile, the AI boom is driving up US natural gas and electricity prices due to data centers’ increasing energy demands.

Those aren’t the only prices going up. The US Department of Labor’s March Consumer Price Index report showed prices climbed 3.3% YoY. (And if that wasn’t enough, recession pop is making a comeback.)

Where does IT fit into all of this? Some experts say IT pros may feel the aftershock of global conflicts and economic issues at their organizations, if they haven’t already. A March Forrester trends report predicted rising energy costs and inflation will likely have an impact on IT budgets, for instance.

“CIOs will once again need to double down on IT spend management through prioritization, targeted cost cutting, tight vendor management, and other techniques,” the report wrote.

Keep reading for more on defending AI investments.—BM

Meta introduces new shopping upgrades under AI model Muse Spark (Retail Brew)

If there was any doubt that Meta knows (or listens to) what its users want, it is eliminating that with another layer of AI. Meta has a new shopping experience built within Muse Spark, the company’s new AI model that launched last week.

How do chief trust officers measure and own trust? (IT Brew)

What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is yours. That’s seemingly the motto of chief trust officers (CTrOs), whose role is heavily focused on a virtue that requires a village to create and maintain.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Sky Scraper: How New York City FC got its pigeon mascot (Marketing Brew)

The MLS team took a page from Ellie the Elephant’s playbook—and worked with the consultancy behind the Phillie Phanatic—to create a bird that could become a fan favorite.