This week I sat down with Velia Carboni, CTO of SharkNinja, to talk about what it actually takes to run technology inside one of the most innovative consumer product companies in the world.
3 Big Insights
Are you prepared for LLM presence for holiday? Having LLM presence buttoned up before holiday this year is critical. Consumer behavior is shifting toward using LLMs for research and SharkNinja wants to be there. Early partnerships with the major platforms are already in place, with pilots around express checkout and shopping agents in progress. But showing up well is not a media buy. You cannot purchase your way into an LLM the way you bought search terms on Google. The LLMs are scraping your first-party information directly, which means the quality and clarity of your product data is everything..
Nonlinear moves drive success: strategy, pivot, strategy. Two years ago Carboni joined SharkNinja and began a foundational modernization of core platforms, security, and data infrastructure before touching AI. That was the strategy. Then she started building LLM gateways to govern how 4,200 employees accessed AI tools. Then she stopped. Looking at what those gateways would actually do, which was take freedom away from people the company had just unleashed, she killed the project. That was the pivot. Now she is finalizing infrastructure and vendor choices, running six cross-functional big bets in parallel with two-to-four week quick wins, and tying every decision to a specific business outcome. That is the next strategy.
Carboni runs a deliberately mixed vendor portfolio: large partners for stability, smaller founder-led firms for innovation energy. The criteria is cultural fit, willingness to share a product roadmap, and whether someone picks up the phone during a production issue.
Seeking Solutions Continuously. Carboni’s team culture includes being in the market continuously. The team is always looking, always evaluating, because, she said, because the moment you stop, you go stale.
My Take - Curiosity didn’t kill the cat, it powers a juggernaut brand: SharkNinja
First: define a juggernaut. No problem. SharkNinja closed Q4 2025 with net sales of $2.1 billion, up 17.6% over the same quarter in 2024. Full year 2025 revenue came in at $6.4 billion, with 15.75% growth year over year. Q1 2026 net sales reached $1.22 billion, up 14.7% over the prior year quarter. Three consecutive periods of double digit growth.
It’s retail and fundamentals will always win. For SharkNinja their fundamentals are 25 to 30 new products a year across 40-plus categories, and every single one starts with a consumer problem. The CEO sits in every product review every week, which is unusual for a chief executive at this scale. And the feedback loop never closes: customer calls, reviews, and post-purchase data all feed directly back into the next generation of product development.
And now for the secret sauce: culture, curiosity and conviction. After you listen to the discussion, you will be inspired to work in this environment. The team is solving consumer issues with incredible passion and commitment. They lead progress with curiosity: find solutions, try solutions, keep or scrap solutions. Freedom to fail because everything is a learning opportunity. They obsess over customer feedback and deploy improvements.
What started as an informercial is now not just a leading company but a blueprint of success.
The Highlight
The Reality Check: The formula of Big Bets and Quick Wins drives organizations forward.
Six active cross-functional big bets, each tied to a defined business outcome
Quick win sprint cycle running in parallel: two to four weeks per initiative
First-party data strategy built specifically for LLM discoverability, not just traditional search
Vendor portfolio deliberately mixed: large for stability, small and founder-led for innovation
AI experimentation open to all 4,200 employees across every function and region
Infrastructure still being finalized: nimbleness over lockdown is the stated priority
CEO in every product review, every week
Media Partnership / Call for Entries
Retail Technology Innovation Hub — RTIH Innovation Awards, 8th Edition
The RTIH Innovation Awards celebrate global retail tech innovation across a fast-moving omnichannel world. The eighth edition is now open for entries.
Entry deadline: Friday, October 2nd
Finalists revealed: Tuesday, October 6th
Winners announced: Wednesday, November 4th, at The HAC, Central London
