But as companies scale across states and/or add new revenue streams, tax exposure also can quietly expand in the background. The U.S. has more than 12,000 distinct sales tax jurisdictions, and each has its own rules and rates. So, even a small misstep can snowball into significant penalties or create challenges during due diligence. At the most basic level, sales tax is what a business collects from customers on taxable goods or services. Use tax applies when a company purchases taxable items and no sales tax was charged (which commonly occurs from an out-of-state vendor). For example, if a startup based in California orders $10,000 of equipment from an Oregon supplier, the business likely owes use tax to California. The point of the system is to keep local and remote sellers on equal footing. However, complexity arises because rules differ dramatically by state and industry. For founders, that complexity becomes more than a compliance nuisance ' it's a business risk. Noncompliance can delay funding, lower valuation and, in some cases, create personal liability....

Amazon's AI chatbot, Rufus, saw a surge of adoption on Black Friday, according to new data published over the weekend by market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. In the U.S., Amazon sessions that resulted in a purchase surged 100% on Black Friday compared with the trailing 30 days, while sessions that resulted in a purchase and didn't include Rufus increased by only 20%. In addition, Amazon saw a 75% day-over-day increase for sessions that included Rufus and resulted in a purchase, compared with just a 35% day-over-day increase for sessions without Rufus that had resulted in a purchase. Amazon's AI chat was first launched into beta in early 2024 before rolling out to all U.S. customers later that year. Today, Rufus helps Amazon shoppers find products, get recommendations, and perform product comparisons. According to e-commerce data from Adobe Analytics, which tracks more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail websites, AI traffic to U.S. retail sites increased by 805% year-over-year on Black Friday. This indicates that consumers more heavily embraced generative AI chatbots to find deals and research products this year. The AI tools were mostly used for popular Black Friday deal categories like electronics, video games, appliances, toys, personal care items, and baby and toddler products....

Sorry, prospective homebuyers. Just over a year after adding climate risk scores, Zillow has removed them from more than 1 million listings after real estate agents complained that the information was causing them to lose sales. But last month, following objections from the California Regional Multiple Listing Service (CRMLS), Zillow removed the listings' climate scores. In their place is a subtle link to their records at First Street, the climate risk analytic startup that provides the data. 'When buyers lack access to clear climate-risk information, they make the biggest financial decision of their lives while flying blind,' First Street spokesperson Matthew Eby told TechCrunch via email. 'The risk doesn't go away; it just moves from a pre-purchase decision into a post-purchase liability.' Art Carter, the CRMLS CEO, told the New York Times that 'displaying the probability of a specific home flooding this year or within the next five years can have a significant impact on the perceived desirability of that property.' He also questioned the accuracy of First Street's data, saying he didn't think that areas which haven't flooded in the last 40 to 50 years were likely to flood in the next five....

These tools promise progress: faster pipelines, lead generation at scale, and more meetings booked. But beneath the metrics is a deeper issue. Trust is deprioritized in favor of speed, and buyers feel it. We stand at the precipice of an entire industry ' one traditionally grounded in human interaction ' flipped on its head. The 'uncanny valley' originally described dolls or robots that look a little too close to humans ' but just off enough to evoke unease. In sales, too much AI-driven personalization skews into the same territory. One mentioned they were impressed by my career trajectory, and congratulated me on my football team's win the previous night. The only issue' They mentioned the wrong team ' a cardinal sin and the result of an AI hallucination. The problem is the system itself and the misaligned incentives it runs on. Sellers are rewarded more for volume than value; pipelines are judged by growth, not quality. When you combine that pressure with tools that can blast thousands of messages in seconds, the result is predictable....