STORES to Redesign Development to be AI-Native with "STORES AI Week"

STORES Inc. (hereinafter STORES) will hold "STORES AI Week," a cross-departmental initiative for the tech and product divisions, in July 2026. For two weeks, members involved in development, including engineers, product managers, and designers, will temporarily step away from their regular development duties to focus on building an AI-first development environment and processes.

This initiative is based on the same concept as the "General Position (Business x Technology) Recruitment" (Note 1) announced in April 2026, and aims to advance STORES' AI-native transformation from the development front lines. During this period, operations, support, and incident response for each service will continue as usual, with no impact on our users.

(Note 1) New General Position "Business x Technology" Created for AI-Native Transformation (April 2026 Press Release)

Background:

STORES has been promoting the use of AI across the company since fiscal year 2025. AI is already deeply integrated into daily development and operations, with employee AI utilization rates at 100%* and AI handling 80%* of code changes. However, as we further scale AI-first development, new challenges have emerged, such as the lack of an environment for parallel development and verification with production-like data, and the need for guardrails to ensure quality and safety.

STORES AI Week will address these challenges across all product departments, leading to the organizational standardization of AI-first development processes.

What STORES AI Week Will Address:

STORES AI Week will focus on establishing an environment where the "Develop -> Verify -> Deploy" cycle, a key part of the product development process, can be scaled with AI.

An infrastructure that can allocate development environments and data environments close to production as needed.

Guardrails that ensure code quality and release safety while incorporating AI.

Mechanisms to enable AI to autonomously handle tasks from development to verification and deployment.

The core of this initiative will be the launch of the development environment infrastructure "Mirage." Mirage will be a platform where all STORES products operate in a data environment similar to that of actual merchants, and developers can freely launch and use it when needed. Once this is in place, the goal is to reach a state where AI autonomously handles testing and bug fixes, allowing humans to focus on evaluation and final approval decisions. The target is to increase the number of pull requests created per developer by tenfold in the future.

Comments (Naoki Komuro, VPoE, STORES Inc.):

AI is fundamentally changing how we develop and the speed at which we make decisions. That's why STORES is investing boldly in AI and fully committed to transforming into an AI-native company. By establishing the foundation for development during AI Week, we will be able to deliver more value to our merchants faster. However, no matter how much work AI takes on, the passion of people remains at the heart of commerce. It's the passion of those who run shops, and our passion to continue refining the platform that connects that passion to value. We approach AI Week believing that the value generated from this investment will create the next STORES and the next generation of shops.

Recruitment Information for 2028 Graduates:

STORES is recruiting for internships as an opportunity to experience firsthand the AI-native development and business creation that is being established through AI Week. Please see below for details.

Internship Information: https://graduate.st.inc/internship

About STORES:

STORES Inc., with its mission of "Just for Fun," aims to foster an economy driven by passion and dedication. We provide various products that support store operations for small and medium-sized businesses, primarily in the retail, food service, and service industries. Through our various "STORES" products, which are based on customer data, we support the continuous sales growth of our business partners and strive to realize a society full of diverse and unique businesses.