Sneakers are among the most sought-after collectible items. They’re also a prime target for scalpers.
Grand View Research values the global sneaker industry at $86 billion and predicts it will reach $128 billion by 2030. The resale market is also going strong, with Cowen Research estimating it will grow to $30 billion by the end of the decade.
Such popularity makes sneakers an easy target for bots, or software applications that can replace humans in performing certain tasks. Sneaker bots can accelerate the checkout process, wait in a virtual line or even fill out billing information.
Sneaker bots took off in 2012, when Nike released its Air Jordan Doernbecher 9 shoes on Twitter. Nike required users to direct message the company for a chance to reserve the shoe. What followed was the creation of bots that messaged Nike when they found keywords like “RSVP now,” and “Doernbecher.” The bots were able to react faster than humans, beating out customers for a chance at the shoes.
Sneaker bots now represent big business for the people behind them
“In 2022, I made a gross profit of $131,000,” said “Botter Boy Nova,” a sneaker bot developer and YouTube creator who goes by that alias due to security concerns.
Jesper Essendrop, CEO of Queue-it, agrees. His company specializes in controlling internet traffic with virtual waiting rooms.
Essendrop said that when looking at “sales of high-profile goods like sneakers,” 40% to 95% “of all traffic coming into web shops is from bots.”
In 2021, cybersecurity software company Imperva found that nearly 23% of retail site traffic came from bots with malicious intent. And CHEQ, another software vendor in the space, found that 1 in 4 Black Friday shoppers in 2022 were fake.
There are currently no laws against using bots to buy sneakers or other retail goods. But legislation, such as a bill called the Stopping Grinch Bots Act, authored by Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., has been introduced.
“Bots are like a thorn in my side,” said Richie Roxas, who collects New Balance sneakers. “I’m now competing with them all the time for special releases and collabs.”
Top sneaker brands like Nike, Adidas and New Balance are under constant attack from bots. Nike says its SNKRS App receives an average of 12 billion bot calls, or entries trying to game the system, a month.
On the SNKRS App, a customer can submit an entry to a drawing by selecting a shoe and a size. Nike then selects participants at random to buy the shoe. A lot of these customers are actually bots.
According to Nike, bots can make up to 10% to 50% of entries depending on demand. For example, in the 2023 release of the Travis Scott x Air Jordan 1 Low OG “Olive,” nearly half of the entries were bots. But Nike told CNBC it has up to a 98% success rate combating bots in the high-demand launches.
Nova and other bot creators have been less successful in recent years, but they still find loopholes and ways to bypass anti-bot measures like CAPTCHA systems. One workaround is called jigging, which is when a creator slightly changes an address, name or other identifying information.
“People are successfully able to still bot Nike SNKRS,” said Nova. “However, the way in which you have to go about it, you have to really understand how the Nike filter works.”
Nike did not comment on whether customers are still able to successfully use bots on the SNKRS app.
Watch the video to learn more about sneaker bots and how companies like Nike are handling them.
Paxton sued Google in 2022 for allegedly unlawfully tracking and collecting the private data of users.
The attorney general said the settlement, which covers allegations in two separate lawsuits against the search engine and app giant, dwarfed all past settlements by other states with Google for similar data privacy violations.
Google’s settlement comes nearly 10 months after Paxton obtained a $1.4 billion settlement for Texas from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to resolve claims of unauthorized use of biometric data by users of those popular social media platforms.
“In Texas, Big Tech is not above the law,” Paxton said in a statement on Friday.
“For years, Google secretly tracked people’s movements, private searches, and even their voiceprints and facial geometry through their products and services. I fought back and won,” said Paxton.
“This $1.375 billion settlement is a major win for Texans’ privacy and tells companies that they will pay for abusing our trust.”
Google spokesman Jose Castaneda said the company did not admit any wrongdoing or liability in the settlement, which involves allegations related to the Chrome browser’s incognito setting, disclosures related to location history on the Google Maps app, and biometric claims related to Google Photo.
Castaneda said Google does not have to make any changes to products in connection with the settlement and that all of the policy changes that the company made in connection with the allegations were previously announced or implemented.
“This settles a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed,” Castaneda said.
“We are pleased to put them behind us, and we will continue to build robust privacy controls into our services.”
Virtual care company Omada Health filed for an IPO on Friday, the latest digital health company that’s signaled its intent to hit the public markets despite a turbulent economy.
Founded in 2012, Omada offers virtual care programs to support patients with chronic conditions like prediabetes, diabetes and hypertension. The company describes its approach as a “between-visit care model” that is complementary to the broader health-care ecosystem, according to its prospectus.
Revenue increased 57% in the first quarter to $55 million, up from $35.1 million during the same period last year, the filing said. The San Francisco-based company generated $169.8 million in revenue during 2024, up 38% from $122.8 million the previous year.
Omada’s net loss narrowed to $9.4 million during its first quarter from $19 million during the same period last year. It reported a net loss of $47.1 million in 2024, compared to a $67.5 million net loss during 2023.
The IPO market has been largely dormant across the tech sector for the past three years, and within digital health, it’s been almost completely dead. After President Donald Trump announced a sweeping tariff policy that plunged U.S. markets into turmoil last month, taking a company public is an even riskier endeavor. Online lender Klarna delayed its long-anticipated IPO, as did ticket marketplace StubHub.
But Omada Health isn’t the first digital health company to file for its public market debut this year. Virtual physical therapy startup Hinge Health filed its prospectus in March, and provided an update with its first-quarter earnings on Monday, a signal to investors that it’s looking to forge ahead.
Omada contracts with employers, and the company said it works with more than 2,000 customers and supports 679,000 members as of March 31. More than 156 million Americans suffer from at least one chronic condition, so there is a significant market opportunity, according to the company’s filing.
In 2022, Omada announced a $192 million funding round that pushed its valuation above $1 billion. U.S. Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Fidelity’s FMR LLC are the largest outside shareholders in the company, each owning between 9% and 10% of the stock.
“To our prospective shareholders, thank you for learning more about Omada. I invite you join our journey,” Omada co-founder and CEO Sean Duffy said in the filing. “In front of us is a unique chance to build a promising and successful business while truly changing lives.”
Liz Reid, vice president, search, Google speaks during an event in New Delhi on December 19, 2022.
Sajjad Hussain | AFP | Getty Images
Testimony in Google‘s antitrust search remedies trial that wrapped hearings Friday shows how the company is calculating possible changes proposed by the Department of Justice.
Google head of search Liz Reid testified in court Tuesday that the company would need to divert between 1,000 and 2,000 employees, roughly 20% of Google’s search organization, to carry out some of the proposed remedies, a source with knowledge of the proceedings confirmed.
The testimony comes during the final days of the remedies trial, which will determine what penalties should be taken against Google after a judge last year ruled the company has held an illegal monopoly in its core market of internet search.
The DOJ, which filed the original antitrust suit and proposed remedies, asked the judge to force Google to share its data used for generating search results, such as click data. It also asked for the company to remove the use of “compelled syndication,” which refers to the practice of making certain deals with companies to ensure its search engine remains the default choice in browsers and smartphones.
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The DOJ also proposed the company divest its Chrome browser but that was not included in Reid’s initial calculation, the source confirmed.
Reid on Tuesday said Google’s proprietary “Knowledge Graph” database, which it uses to surface search results, contains more than 500 billion facts, according to the source, and that Google has invested more than $20 billion in engineering costs and content acquisition over more than a decade.
“People ask Google questions they wouldn’t ask anyone else,” she said, according to the source.
Reid echoed Google’s argument that sharing its data would create privacy risks, the source confirmed.
Closing arguments for the search remedies trial will take place May 29th and 30th, followed by the judge’s decision expected in August.
The company faces a separate remedies trial for its advertising tech business, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 22.