Why Levi’s turned a hackathon idea into an AI tool for store employees to make denim shopping easier

While hosting a hackathon last year, an employee at Levi Strauss & Co. presented a new generative artificial intelligence concept that envisioned stitching together product details about denim, operational procedures, and training materials to make work easier for store associates.

Working closely with Google Cloud and leveraging Gemini’s large language models, Levi’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer Jason Gowans moved quickly to run a limited pilot in just 10 stores in late 2025, allowing employees to ask various questions in natural language, including the difference between 501 and 505 jeans, how to process returns without a receipt, and explaining how to complete an online order that’s been fulfilled in the store.

Called “STITCH,” the AI assistant can be accessed through a tablet or smartphone and has had such a strong start that Levi’s has rolled it out to more than 70 U.S. Levi’s stores. Gowans intends to bring STITCH to even more locations, add more features, and make it available in additional languages beyond English. Levi’s reports that stores where employees have access to STITCH saw an eight-point improvement in consumer satisfaction versus locations that do not have the technology. 

“That gives us some intuition that there’s real value here, and the stylists do seem to be showing up as more knowledgeable and more confident,” says Gowans.

In his role as Levi’s first-ever C-suite digital officer, Gowans is responsible for both for the underlying technology that supports the internal enterprise and the direct-to-consumer channels that include levi.com, the apparel brand’s mobile app, and a fleet of approximately 3,300 Levi’s branded stores and shop-in-shops. Growing the DTC business has been a strategic priority for CEO Michelle Gass, as margins from that part of the business are higher than those of the wholesale channel, which encompasses Levi’s sales at stores like Target and Macy’s.

The DTC business accounted for nearly half of Levi’s revenue for the fiscal year ending November 30 and has reported 15 consecutive quarters of positive comparable sales growth, according to the company. 

Gowans is also keenly focused on infusing AI and other technologies into every point of the journey, beginning in product conceptualization and continuing through the moment it shows up on the retail shelf. He authorized the use of AI in the design process, demand forecasting, and price optimization to determine the right price for its goods. Gowans has also made Microsoft Copilot widely available and the company’s workers have already built more than 800 AI agents.

“We’ve seeded this by training our employees, both our corporate employees and our stylists,” says Gowans of his vision that AI implementation shouldn’t be a top-down mandate.

As a result of that broad encouragement, Gowans says that agentic AI use cases have emerged in pockets of the business that he hadn’t anticipated. One area of excitement is within SAP’s enterprise resource planning software system, which is used to integrate processes like finance, manufacturing, and supply chain management.

With half of Levi’s sales still coming from 50,000 points of sale in approximately 120 countries, some smaller retailers still submit their orders as PDF forms sent through email. With AI, Levi’s is now automating that step, rather than requiring a human to manually input all of the order details.

Another AI project that Gowans is working on this year is a so-called “super agent” that will be embedded within Microsoft Teams and act as a one-stop shop to retrieve information and take action from subagents that have already been deployed across AI, human resources, operations, and other parts of the business. Levi’s has also built an initial proof of concept and has piloted the tool with some employees, with some communication already taking place between the “super agent” and vendors like ServiceNow and Workday.

But the “super agent” doesn’t have access to all 800 AI agents at Levi’s, as Gowans says protocols around these systems—including Google’s Agent2Agent and Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol—aren’t yet settled. 

“The architecture that we built at the time has since evolved, given what Microsoft and others have laid out as far as protocols,” says Gowans. “This idea of a super agent is something that we’re definitely going to keep building towards to make that employee experience as intuitive as possible.”

He is also keeping a close eye on how generative AI is changing how shoppers discover brands and make their purchases. One piloted application is an AI-enabled styling agent in the Levi’s mobile app, which is currently only available to the company’s U.S.-based employees, and which can give guidance on denim, styling, and make personalized recommendations. Gowans hopes to roll out this tool externally in 2026.

With hundreds of millions of users now on ChatGPT, Gemini, and other chatbots, a new practice has emerged called generative engine optimization, or GEO. Gowans says that Levi’s is working toward making its products available on those channels, but wants to think bigger than simply offering a website link in response to a chatbot prompt. 

He also feels that agentic commerce—which is when an AI agent shops on behalf of a consumer—is further in the future for brands like Levi’s, which sells apparel that’s highly subjective when it comes to fit and style. Agentic commerce is likely to be more popular for commodities, like groceries, Gowans asserts. 

“It’s a space that we’re paying a lot of attention to,” says Gowans. “I expect that we will be testing something at some point.”

John Kell

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NEWS PACKETS

Anthropic sues the Pentagon. After the Defense Department told Anthropic that the company’s AI tools pose security threats, Anthropic on Monday filed a lawsuit calling the administration’s actions “unprecedented and unlawful.” The complaint claimed that government contracts were already being canceled and that private contracts were in doubt, putting “hundreds of millions of dollars” at near-term risk. The squabble is centered on the Pentagon’s assertion that it should be able to use Anthropic’s AI technologies for all lawful cases, while the startup wants to prevent the use of AI for mass domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons.

Nvidia, AMD chip exports may be tied to foreign investment promises. Bloomberg reports that a draft rule by the US Commerce Department may require that nations whose companies seek to buy AI chips from Nvidia and AMD commit to investing in the domestic AI infrastructure. The proposed rule would also require foreign companies to seek government permission for almost all exports of AI chips, a global expansion of the current framework that only covers around 40 nations. Nvidia was also in the news last week when CEO Jensen Huang said his recent multi-billion-dollar investments in OpenAI ($30 billion) and Anthropic ($10 billion) may be the company’s last, as both startups are gearing up for an anticipated public market debut in late 2026.

OpenAI, Meta ink acquisitions. On Monday, OpenAI announced it had acquired Promptfoo and that the cybersecurity startup’s team would join the ChatGPT maker. According to CNBC, Promptfoo’s security tools will be incorporated within OpenAI’s Frontier platform for AI agents. A day later, Axios reported that Meta had acquired Moltbook, which has been described as a Reddit-like social media site that’s only for AI agents. Moltbook launched in January but immediately inspired intrigue, as humans could only observe from the sidelines.

Kroger appoints executive to oversee AI efforts. Grocery giant Kroger, which ranks #27 on the Fortune 500, has named Milen Mahadevan to serve as president and CEO of the company’s retail analytics subsidiary 84.51˚ as it gears up to introduce agentic AI shopping for its customers this year. Those agentic AI capabilities, according to CFO David Kennerley during Kroger’s earnings presentation last week, will help shoppers “discover items, build baskets, plan meals and stay within budgets, all in a personalized way.” CIO Dive reports that Kroger will consolidate all data and AI teams under Mahadevan’s leadership. The news comes after Kroger reported better-than-expected quarterly profit, which gave the stock a lift on Thursday amid a broader market selloff.

ADOPTION CURVE

Churches are cautiously flocking to AI. The rising popularity of AI has even caught the attention of Pope Leo XIV, who this year has advised his priests not to use AI tools to write their homilies and called for regulation to protect people from getting too emotionally attached to chatbots. And this week, a new survey found that church leaders are broadly expressing similar concerns: 51% are very concerned about plagiarism and compromised messaging when AI is adopted in ministry, 47% worry about data privacy and security, and 37% fear AI could replace spiritual guidance.

Nearly two out of three leaders feel it is either “extremely” or “somewhat important” for churches to have AI governance policies, and yet only 5% say they’ve done so thus far, according to the survey of 1,306 church leaders conducted by Christian polling firm Barna Group on behalf of church management software company Pushpay.

Today, a majority of church leaders (58%) also say that, to their knowledge, their church is not using AI. One third report using AI to some capacity, while the remaining 8% say they weren’t sure. The survey found that the most common use cases included generating or editing written church communication, graphics, social media posts, and in some cases, despite Pope Leo’s concerns—preparing sermons.

Courtesy of Pushpay and Barna Group

JOBS RADAR

Hiring:

– Gallagher is seeking a chief information officer, based in Rolling Meadows, Illinois. Posted salary range: $133.5K-$260.5K/year.

– The New York City Fire Department is seeking a chief information security officer, based in Brooklyn. Posted salary range: $75K-$180K/year.

– Trajan Wealth is seeking a chief technology officer, based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Posted salary range: $280K-$500K/year.

– The United States Patent and Trademark Office is seeking a chief data officer, based in Alexandria, Virginia. Posted salary range: $198.5K-$220K/year.

Hired:

– Kimberly-Clark appointed Francesco Tinto to the role of chief information and global business services officer. Tinto joins the maker of Huggies diapers and Kleenex tissues from Advantage Solutions, where he served as chief digital officer sales and marketing services provider. He also previously served as global CIO at Walgreens Boots Alliance and as CIO at Kraft Heinz.

– FactSet named Kate Stepp to serve as chief AI officer and Bob Stolte as CTO, effective March 2. The financial data and software firm said Stepp, CTO since September 2022, would focus on the development and deployment of AI capabilities across FactSet’s products and client solutions in her new role. Stolte, previously a managing director at Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, will oversee engineering, cybersecurity, IT business continuity, and enterprise technology strategy.

– WSFS Bank appointed Rene Gonzales as CTO to lead the Delaware-based financial services company’s technology strategy, infrastructure, and operations. Most recently, Gonzales served as CTO for mortgage subservicer Cenlar Federal Savings Bank.

– On The Go named Sri Anne as CTO, where he will lead technology operations, infrastructure, and digital experiences for customers across the company’s airport restaurant and retail operations. Previously, Anne served as head of engineering at JetBlue Airways, VP of engineering at Madison Square Garden, and as director of software engineering at American Express.

– Perform Properties named Brad Bazley to serve as CTO. He joins the Blackstone-owned real estate company after most recently serving as VP and CIO of enterprise and legal technology at media and software company Internet Brands. He also held senior roles at companies such as Material Holdings and Red Bull.

– New Relic announced the appointment of Michael Frendo as CTO, joining the software-as-a-service company after most recently serving as CTO of engineering at enterprise cybersecurity company Proofpoint. Frendo also previously led global teams at Cisco, Polycom, and Juniper.

– Kinzler appointed Cory Witty as CIO, joining the employee-owned group of construction services companies to oversee data, security, infrastructure, and business applications. Witty previously served as SVP and head of corporate technology at insurance and reinsurance provider Global Atlantic Financial Group. Before that, he held technology leadership roles at Aviva and ITAGroup.

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