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This Week in M&A Issue #235
Today’s trend of the week is “bluetooth wallet trackers”.
Ever been running late and your wallet just vanishes? It’s a panic most people know all too well, and now, a fast-growing trend is trying to solve it.
Bluetooth wallet trackers are surging in popularity, with Google searches up 8429% over the past year and another 312% in just the last month. These small devices slip into your wallet and connect via Bluetooth, making it easy to track them if they go missing.
The trackers started gaining traction after the launch of AirTags, but what’s driving this latest spike is TikTok, with an average of 1.3k TikTok mentions per month. Travel-focused creators are recommending wallet trackers as simple, practical hacks, pushing them into the mainstream.
Growing demand, strong social media momentum, and a range of affordable product options make wallet trackers a category worth branching into right now.
Today we have for you:
Google Search revenue grew 19% in Q1
Shopify data challenges the idea that jobs are safer than entrepreneurship
And:
New free tool simplifies porting Google Ads to ChatGPT
How Amazon sellers are using AI in their business
OpenAI crawl activity surges after GPT-5 launch
Alright, let’s dive in.
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Image Source: Giphy
AI Isn’t Killing Search; It’s Helping It Grow
Great news, search is not dying.
Google just reported that Search revenue grew 19% year over year to $60.4 billion in Q1 2026.
For the past two years, the narrative has been that AI chatbots would reduce demand for search. The data now says the opposite. AI is being layered into Search and expanding how people use it.
CEO Sundar Pichai directly linked this growth to AI features inside Search. Products like AI Overviews and AI Mode are increasing usage, not replacing it. Users are running more queries and coming back more often.
Two things are driving this.
First, engagement. AI helps users handle more complex queries, which leads to more searches overall. Google says total query volume hit an all-time high this quarter.
Second, monetization. Ads are still performing. AI-generated results are fitting into Google’s existing ad system without hurting revenue. The company says monetization rates are similar to traditional search.
Google has also reduced the cost of serving AI responses by more than 30% since Gemini 3. That matters because higher usage only works if margins stay intact.
For business owners, this changes how to think about distribution. Search is evolving into a mix of direct answers and links, with AI playing a bigger role in what gets surfaced.
Visibility is becoming less predictable, but Google remains central to how people discover information online.
Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship May Be More Stable Than Employment
New data from Shopify suggest entrepreneurship is becoming more common, more durable, and more profitable, challenging the idea that traditional employment is the safer long-term path.
Three trends stand out. First, more new businesses are launching.
Since 2018, the number of Shopify merchants making their first sale has increased sevenfold. This is happening alongside a weaker job market, with around 1.2 million US job cuts in 2025, many linked to advances in AI. More people are exploring self-employment as an alternative.
The second signal is about experience.
Repeat founders consistently outperform first-time founders. Shopify data shows that entrepreneurs launching a second business generate more than twice the sales per store compared to their first venture. This is because skills compound. Understanding customers, selecting markets, and operating lean systems improve with each cycle.
The third signal is revenue growth over time.
Entrepreneurs on the platform who started between 2017 and 2020 increased their average sales by 25% between 2022 and 2025. This reflects both individual learning and a broader shift. Ecommerce now accounts for over 20% of global retail sales in 2025, giving online businesses a growing base to scale from.
The traditional idea of stability tied to a single employer is weakening. At the same time, the cost and complexity of starting a business is falling, and the tools available to founders are improving quickly.
Starting a business is still risky, but it is becoming more structured. Outcomes improve with repetition, and the growing digital economy is creating more opportunities for independent founders to build and scale businesses.
HIDDEN GEM
Listing #87338 - $1,638,283.00
Avg. Monthly Profit - $63,011.00
Amazon FBA | Children, Sports | 26x
Created in March 2024, this German Amazon FBA business specializes in children’s swimming accessories. The product catalog includes 184 active SKUs across 15 parent ASINs. With TÜV certification, the brand holds a competitive edge in a safety-conscious niche.
We’re highlighting this business this week because of its following strengths:
Profitable: healthy net profit margins of 23%
Popular: the top SKUs average 4.5 stars with hundreds of reviews
Passive: the seller spends just 10 hours per week maintaining the business
Learn More >
Ads
This New Tool Lets You Launch ChatGPT Ads in Minutes
Marketers curious about advertising inside ChatGPT just got a shortcut.
On April 27, search intelligence firm Adthena launched ChatGPT AdBridge, a free, one-time tool designed to move existing Google Ads campaigns into ChatGPT’s ad ecosystem without starting from scratch. By connecting via OAuth, it pulls in your current campaigns and transforms them for ChatGPT in just four steps, removing hours of manual setup.
AdBridge reads (but doesn’t alter) your Google Ads data, then layers in AI to expand keyword coverage, tighten negative keyword lists, and generate creative assets tailored to ChatGPT’s conversational format. The result? A ready-to-upload CSV for ChatGPT Ads, plus supporting files like keyword lists, creative briefs, and ad copy.
One of the biggest challenges it solves is adapting negative keywords. While Google Ads allows massive lists, ChatGPT caps them at just 25 per campaign. AdBridge analyzes your full list and selects the most relevant ones based on how ChatGPT matches conversational intent.
It also goes beyond setup, offering insights into which brands appear in auctions, how often they show, and which prompts trigger ads, all valuable intel for optimizing performance.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT ad pilot is gaining momentum, now with over 600 advertisers. Costs are dropping too, with CPMs falling from $60 to as low as $25, and minimum spend decreasing from $250,000 to $50,000, making the channel far more accessible.
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AI
Image Source: Marketplace Pulse
Sellers Are Using AI, Just Not Where It Matters Most Yet
A new Marketplace Pulse report looked at how Amazon sellers generating more than $2 billion in combined annual revenue are using AI in their business.
The answer is…not much.
The study found that 83.4% of them are using AI somewhere in their business. That sounds huge, but most sellers are only using it in a few specific tasks, averaging just over 3 use cases each.
Right now, AI is mostly being used for content work.
The most common use cases are improving product listings (63.5%) and generating images or videos (49.2%). These use cases are easy to test, easy to see results from, and quick to iterate on.
Where AI is not being used as much is in the areas that actually move the profit needle. Things like pricing, ad optimisation, inventory forecasting, and competitor analysis are still mostly handled without AI support. These are more complex tasks, but also higher impact.
The results are also a bit mixed.
The biggest single response in the survey was that AI has not made a measurable difference yet (25.4%). Even among heavier users, there is no clear link between using more AI and getting better results.
Higher performing sellers are a bit more likely to report positive impact from AI, while lower performing sellers are about twice as likely to say it has had no impact. But it is not clear if AI is driving performance, or if better businesses are simply in a better position to use AI effectively.
So right now, most sellers are using AI, but largely for surface-level tasks. But few sellers trust using it inside the core decisions that actually drive the business.
Search
OpenAI Bots Are Flooding the Web: What It Means for Your Content
OpenAI’s bots are hitting the web far more often after GPT-5, and it’s changing how your content gets discovered.
A recent study analyzed over 7 billion OpenAI bot events across enterprise websites from November 2024 to March 2026. It focused on three crawlers: ChatGPT-User (user-triggered page fetches), GPTBot (training), and OAI-SearchBot (used for live search results).
Since GPT-5 launched in August 2025, OpenAI’s automated crawling has roughly tripled. OAI-SearchBot saw the biggest jump, growing 3.5x and adding around 2.2 billion events. GPTBot also climbed 2.9x, contributing an additional 1.8 billion events.
Search-related crawling is now leading the way. Before GPT-5, search and training crawlers ran at similar levels. Now, OAI-SearchBot has overtaken GPTBot. Some industries saw huge increases, especially healthcare (+740%) and media/publishing (+702%).
Meanwhile, ChatGPT-User activity dropped 28% between December 2025 and March 2026 compared to the previous year. This suggests ChatGPT is leaning more on pre-indexed content and improved retrieval, rather than fetching pages in real time.
So what does this mean for online business owners?
Your content is being scanned and indexed more than ever, even if fewer users click through to your site. Visibility is expanding beyond traditional search engines into AI-generated answers. Also, because search-style crawling now outweighs training, your content is more likely to be used in live responses.
What should you do?
Ensure your site allows access to GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot (check your robots.txt). Focus on clear, high-quality content that directly answers questions to improve your chances of being featured. And don’t rely solely on clicks. Visibility and brand presence inside AI tools are becoming just as important.
Google still dominates crawling, but OpenAI is growing fast. If your content isn’t optimized for how these systems crawl, index, and surface information, you risk becoming invisible in a channel that’s only getting bigger.
Money Nomad
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Listing #10083 - $28,000.00
Youtube | Entertainment & Media
Evergreen YouTube channel focused on classic German films and nostalgia driven content. The audience is primarily German speaking viewers with high engagement and consistent interest in cultural classics. Currently monetized via YouTube ads, with clear upside in sponsorships, affiliates, and media partnerships. Learn More
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