Ekta Chopra, who has been at e.l.f. Beauty for more than a decade and recently transitioned from Chief Digital Officer to Chief Technology and AI Officer, shared insights into how the beauty retailer is structuring its AI work (Retailgentic). e.l.f. runs three dedicated AI pods covering agentic commerce and growth, intelligent operations, and the human-agent workforce, with each pod owning data, change management, integrations, and training (Retailgentic). The agentic growth roles are now being hired as dedicated full-time positions across e.l.f.'s brands (Retailgentic).
Chopra's core message to commerce practitioners is that bad data equals bad AI, making it essential to fix foundational data infrastructure before scaling AI initiatives (Retailgentic). Rather than pursuing unproven ROI metrics, she measures organizational readiness and focuses on product categories where e.l.f. has competitive advantage (Retailgentic). e.l.f. has also invested in supply-chain AI, adopting tools like Lyric for forecasting and demand planning, with planners now functioning as engineers and building their own AI workflows across accounts payable, accounts receivable, payroll, and inventory teams (Retailgentic).
Looking ahead, Chopra predicts Meta will win the agent shopping race and emphasizes that brands need to establish agent identity infrastructure now to track which agent is arriving and which customer it represents—positioning this as the next major CDP and CRM-style plumbing project for retail (Retailgentic).