Shopify CTO Mikhail Parakhin leaves after two years

Mikhail Parakhin is leaving his job as chief technology officer of Ottawa-based Shopify after just over two years and will move into an advisory role, the company confirmed to BetaKit.

Shopify did not say when or why he is leaving, and it has not named a successor. Parakhin did not respond to BetaKit’s request for comment by the time it published its report on Oct. 19.

“Mikhail has left an indelible mark on the company and has helped us level up in engineering and machine learning,” a Shopify spokesperson said. “As he leaves, we’re grateful for his contributions and glad that he’ll continue as an advisor.”

The departure first surfaced in an anonymous post on X on the weekend before BetaKit’s report, which then confirmed the move with the company.

Shopify hired Parakhin in August 2024 to lead its engineering and data organizations. He is a former Microsoft executive who served as CEO of advertising and web services there, and he was earlier chief technology officer of the Russian internet company Yandex. He succeeded Allan Leinwand, who left the role in early 2023.

Under Parakhin, Shopify invested heavily in artificial intelligence tools for merchants and used the technology internally to speed up product development. The company has since struck partnerships with OpenAI on ChatGPT ads and with Meta on AI checkout.

Parakhin’s LinkedIn profile, which had not been updated at the time of BetaKit’s report, describes his focus as bringing AI into the shopping space. It is not yet clear what he plans to do next.

Shopify shares have been volatile alongside other technology stocks in recent sessions, as covered in our report on how the TSX closed down 351 points as gold and tech stocks slid.

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Source: BetaKit.