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Loblaw Partners with Canadian AI Company Shakudo to Accelerate Its AI Adoption and Deployment
TORONTO, May 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Loblaw Companies Limited (TSX: L; “Loblaw”...
About this update from Loblaw Companies Limited
[{"type":"text","content":"Loblaw Partners with Canadian AI Company Shakudo to Accelerate Its AI Adoption and Deployment\nTORONTO, May 04, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Loblaw Companies Limited (TSX: L; “Loblaw” or the “Company”) has partnered with Canadian technology firm Shakudo, as the Company continues to accelerate AI adoption to enhance its customer shopping experience and enhance its organizational capabilities. Shakudo’s platform enables companies to manage and scale AI, machine learning, and data infrastructure within complex technological environments. Loblaw will use this platform to build and run first-party AI applications, creating a centralized and consistent environment for its Digital and Technology & Analytics teams. This partnership reflects Loblaw’s commitment to supporting Canadian innovation and technology, and marks another key milestone in the company’s ongoing efforts to increase its capabilities of rapidly deploying advanced systems and building ready-to-use tools internally. “Speed matters, but standards matter more,” said Charu Pujari, Senior Vice President, Engineering and AI at Loblaw. “By partnering with Shakudo, we’ve given our teams a common platform to build on – so they can focus on solving real problems instead of reinventing core plumbing. It’s how we scale agentic capabilities responsibly, across many teams, without fragmentation.” This partnership is central to how Loblaw builds AI: enabling faster development and consistent execution, while maintaining strict governance and oversight across all autonomous, agent-driven operations. As part of its AI integration strategy, Loblaw is establishing internal protocols that allow AI applications to securely interact with enterprise systems. Teams will use secure servers to coordinate AI-driven workflows, enhancing efficiency while maintaining governance and oversight. “Loblaw is building exactly the kind of AI-native platform we designed Shakudo for,” said Yevgeniy Vahlis, Founder of Shakudo. “They’re not experimenting at the edges, they’re operationalizing agent orchestration at enterprise scale, with real standards, real workflows, and real impact. It’s exciting to see a Canadian company use Canadian AI technology as the backbone of su...