Executives of the Year: Fiona Tan

Wayfair chief technology officer Fiona Tan has pushed generative AI deeper into the retailer's operations over the past year, using it to enrich a catalog of 30 million to 40 million products, clean up contradictory supplier data, generate product information, and create realistic room visualizations. Wayfair partnered with Google to help develop its Universal Commerce Protocol, unveiled in January, and partnered with OpenAI on agentic shopping within ChatGPT.

Wayfair sells between 30 million and 40 million products across furniture, appliances, home goods, and more. The problem chief technology officer Fiona Tan aims to solve is preventing consumers from having to weed through them. “Anything and everything that you could possibly want should be there,” Tan says. “But at the same time, you don’t want to have to look through all of that.” Over the past year, Tan has pushed generative AI deeper into the company, including to enrich its product catalog, clean up contradictory supplier data, generate more useful product information, and even create visual experiences that allow consumers to see products together in realistic rooms. Wayfair also teamed up with Google https://investor.wayfair.com/news/news-details/2026/Wayfair-Partners-with-Google-to-Advance-AI-Powered-Shopping-for-the-Home/default.aspx to help develop its Universal Commerce Protocol, unveiled in January, and partnered with OpenAI https://openai.com/index/powering-product-discovery-in-chatgpt/ on agentic shopping within ChatGPT. “When are you not checking your phone?” TIME Executives of the Year on their phone habits and more.