After divesting its logistics business in 2023, the company refocused on its core strength: powering commerce infrastructure. Since then, Shopify has accelerated its growth through targeted partnerships, acquisitions, and product development — growing its share of the US e-commerce market from 10% to 12% and boosting revenue by 26% in FY2024. 

Now, Shopify is primed to take on new challenges. From enabling immersive shopping experiences to onboarding enterprise clients and monetizing its data through advertising, the company is laying the foundation for a more ambitious role in global commerce.

Drawing on CB Insights data across investments, acquisitions, integrations, and earnings transcripts, we identify 3 key areas that reveal where Shopify is heading next:

• Powering immersive and unified shopping experiences: Shopify’s relationships with gaming, payments, and agentic commerce players will enable always-on, cross-platform shopping — with Shopify infrastructure at the ecosystem’s core.   
• Becoming the go-to enterprise commerce platform: Through system integrator partnerships, composable solutions like Commerce Components, and unbundled tools like Shop Pay, Shopify is positioning itself as a modular alternative to Salesforce and Adobe.
• Turning customer data into new ad revenue streams: With proprietary tools like Shopify Audiences and new integrations with CDPs and campaign platforms, Shopify is laying the groundwork for a retail media network — creating new ways to monetize merchant and shopper data at scale.

In the graphic below, we show where Shopify has already built momentum across its three strategic pillars — and where we think it’s heading next, including our predictions on future partners and acquisitions.

These priorities signal how the e-commerce giant could reshape buying experiences and challenge established players across advertising, enterprise software, and commerce infrastructure.

We dive into each prediction below. 

1. Powering immersive and unified shopping experiences.

Shopify’s growing US e-commerce share reflects a deliberate strategy to embed commerce capabilities into more contexts. Its integrations with platforms like Roblox and Perplexity AI suggest a vision of always-on, channel-agnostic shopping where Shopify is the core infrastructure across both traditional and emerging environments.

Enabling shopping at any time, on any platform

In late 2024, Shopify took a step into the world of agentic commerce by integrating with Perplexity’s new AI shopper, Buy with Pro. This has enabled consumers to browse and transact directly via Shop Pay within Perplexity’s interface. 

Around the same time, it became Roblox’s first commerce integration partner, giving Shopify merchants access to 80M+ daily users through in-game storefronts powered by Shopify Checkout.

Source: CB Insights — Shopify Q3’24 earnings call

To that end, Shopify is expanding the functionality of its own products. For example, in 2024, it introduced “tap to pay” for its Point of Sale (POS) app and introduced offline payment capabilities, reinforcing its commitment to connecting online and physical experiences. Its integration with loyalty platform Gatsby enables merchants to engage customers across both environments.

Meanwhile, its partnership with India-based Cashfree Payments — enabling local on-site card processing — is part of a broader effort to tap into local economies through regional POS providers.

Using CB Insights’ Mosaic score, which measures business momentum, we sorted early- and mid-stage POS companies in a few key markets (EU and APAC) where Shopify could expand. Focusing on companies that serve retailers, we surfaced these 3 potential partners:

• Flatpay (Mosaic: 783) is a Danish company offering simplified payment processing solutions for small and medium-sized businesses. 
• Teya (Mosaic: 758), based in London, provides payment processing and financial services for small and medium-sized businesses across Europe. 
• Dtcpay (Mosaic: 735) is a Singapore-based digital payment platform. Its solution includes multi-currency swaps to convert fiat and stablecoins. 

Get the full list of potential partners in the EU and APAC

2. Becoming the go-to enterprise commerce platform.

Shopify has built the foundation to move beyond its traditional small-business customer base and compete directly with enterprise commerce platforms like Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Adobe Commerce. The company is positioning itself as a modular, flexible infrastructure layer — designed to meet the needs of large, complex merchants.

Partnerships with migration solutions clear a big hurdle

One of the biggest barriers for enterprise merchants is the complexity of migrating from legacy platforms. To address this, Shopify has steadily expanded its network of system integrators (SIs) since 2022, forming partnerships with Deloitte, EY, and KPMG to streamline onboarding and implementation.

Source: CB Insights — Shopify Q3’23 earnings call

In April 2024, Shopify deepened this strategy with a joint partnership alongside Google Cloud and Cognizant to offer end-to-end digital commerce solutions. These alliances signal Shopify’s increasing traction among enterprise IT buyers — and the company’s evolving go-to-market motion.

Shopify has also added specialized migration and enablement partners to its app store. In August 2024, it onboarded Pivotree, a digital commerce design firm, and in January 2025, expanded its relationship with Anatta to support enterprise migration needs.

Streamlining checkout and payments for large merchants

Simplifying payment workflows remains a core part of Shopify’s enterprise pitch. Its a la carte checkout solution, Shop Pay, is now offered independently and has been adopted by large brands like Coach. Shopify has layered on key partnerships to support broader payment functionality:

• In June 2023, it partnered with Adyen to enable more efficient processing for global enterprise merchants.
  
• In September 2024, it expanded its integration with PayPal, making it a card processor for Shopify and streamlining order management, reporting, and chargebacks.

Shopify has also supported crypto payments via its app store. In 2024, Solana Pay — powered by Helio (now owned by MoonPay) — added support for more tokens, loyalty programs, and stablecoin conversion, expanding Shopify’s optionality for cutting-edge payment rails.

The company is also offering other point solutions to serve enterprise merchants’ needs. In October 2024, it partnered with AI search company Coveo to offer tools for AI-driven product discovery, personalized recommendations, and more, focusing on more prominent retailers.

Learn more about companies using generative AI in e-commerce

Its integrations with tax technology leaders Vertex and Avalara further support its enterprise expansion, enabling complex compliance for cross-border transactions.

Source: CB Insights — Shopify business relationship insights

The tax compliance software market offers Shopify more potential tax compliance partners as it expands its reach with enterprise customers. Using the market’s ESP, which identifies and ranks leading private companies in a given technology landscape, we can highlight challenger companies on the rise that could be valuable relationships for Shopify:

• Sovos provides global tax compliance and regulatory reporting software solutions. 
• Exactera offers AI-powered tax compliance solutions for transfer pricing, income tax provision, and R&D tax credits.
• Neo.Tax also builds AI-powered tax automation software for startups and small businesses.

These moves underscore Shopify’s shift toward a composable, enterprise-grade stack — built to compete with legacy vendors by offering faster implementation, flexible tooling, and global readiness.

3. Shopify will use its reach and first-party data to power advertising for its merchants.

Shopify has long equipped its merchants with tools for personalization and customer acquisition. But its recent product upgrades and tech partnerships point to a broader ambition: turning its vast merchant network and rich first-party data into a full-fledged advertising business.

The activity hints at Shopify building its own version of a retail media network—one that could allow the company to sell ad space to merchants and outside brands, putting it in competition with advertising leaders like Amazon, Google, and Walmart.

To start, Shopify has expanded access to 2 of its own ad-focused products:

• The newest iteration (v2.4) of its customer acquisition tool, Shopify Audiences, launched in June 2024, helps merchants target narrower customer groups and maximize ad performance across networks and platforms. Some merchants have seen CAC reductions of up to 50%. 
• In December 2024, the company made its advertising tool, Shop Campaigns, available to all merchants in the US and Canada. Previously, only higher-tier Shopify Plus merchants could use the product. 

But Shopify’s leadership sees potential in advertising for Shopify beyond its proprietary products:

Source: CB Insights — Shopify Q1’24 earnings call

To unify and activate customer data, Shopify has partnered with third-party platforms that aggregate behavioral and transactional insights:

• In October 2024, Blueshift made its solution available on the Shopify app store. Its tools include a customer data platform, automated decision-making for recommendations, and a cross-channel marketing platform.
• Also in October 2024, Trellis announced an integration with Shopify. The relationship integrates shopper data into Amazon Marketing Cloud, connecting shopper insights across platforms to more effectively target messaging. 

Looking ahead, Shopify may deepen its capabilities in data orchestration by offering its own customer data platform (CDP) or data clean room solution. We ranked the companies in the CDP market by their M&A probability and Mosaic score (600+) to isolate potential M&A targets for Shopify:

• Optimove leverages AI to orchestrate personalized multichannel campaigns for B2C companies.
• Simon specializes in personalization and customer journey orchestration for retail, travel, and subscription businesses. 
• Hightouch is a composable customer data platform specializing in data activation and reverse ETL services.

Shopify is also building new demand channels for merchants. In 2024, it partnered with Mirakl to enable third-party marketplace creation and with Target to feature Shopify merchant products on the retailer’s digital shelves.

These moves suggest Shopify is building more than merchant tools — it’s assembling a vertically integrated commerce and media stack that could challenge the dominance of legacy ad platforms and redefine how brands connect with shoppers.

Research: How generative AI could supercharge retailers’ ad networks

RELATED RESEARCH FROM CB INSIGHTS:

• The future of the customer journey: AI agents take control of the buying process
• How generative AI could supercharge retailers’ ad networks
• 7 tech M&A predictions for 2025
• Interviews with Shopify customers

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Using CB Insights data, we uncovered 4 strategic priorities highlighted by Roche’s acquisitions, investments, and partnerships since Q1’23. We then categorized companies by their relationships with Roche across these priorities.

Here are 3 key takeaways from our analysis:

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While it sold its autonomous vehicle (AV) unit (ATG) in 2020, the now-profitable company is leveraging its 2.8B quarterly trips and global reach to attract AV partnerships that could reduce costs long-term across its rideshare, delivery, and freight business lines.

For transportation and logistics executives, Uber’s recent activity signals a shift in the mobility landscape, highlighting the importance of diverse AV partnerships to hedge against tech and regulatory uncertainties while capturing early market share.

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What you need to know:

• Eli Lilly is using technology to reengineer how it develops treatments, leveraging AI to speed up drug discovery.
• The company is investing in novel drug delivery methods, such as targeted delivery systems, to improve treatment efficacy and the patient experience.
• Lilly is rapidly expanding its direct-to-consumer approach through LillyDirect, partnering with telehealth providers and integrating with digital pharmacies to streamline drug distribution and improve patient access.

Eli Lilly is using technology to reengineer how it develops and delivers treatments.

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What you need to know:

• In 2021, Morgan Stanley became the largest US wealth manager by assets managed.
• It achieved this by developing a self-sustaining asset-gathering funnel through the incorporation of 2 new channels beyond its flagship wealth management business.
• Its efforts and adherence to this strategy exemplify how wealth managers can turbocharge asset growth and retention through acquisitions and collaborative initiatives.

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, then-new Morgan Stanley (MS) CEO James Gorman decided to anchor the firm’s long-term growth in wealth management, where revenues — typically based on fees as a percentage of managed assets — are stable, recurring, and rise in tandem with market growth.

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Unlike big tech peers like Google and Meta, it’s largely kept its in-house model development activity out of the public eye. With a focus on the on-device user experience — and smaller models as a result — Apple is relying on external large language models (LLMs) from partners like OpenAI to round out its generative AI suite.

Using CB Insights data, we uncovered the 3 biggest strategic priorities in Apple’s AI strategy:

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For the networking leader, AI forms the crux of a multi-pronged strategy to steer away from pure hardware toward services and software, which offer expanded revenue streams. Cisco is investing in pure-play AI infrastructure startups, forming AI partnerships, and embedding AI in its products.

Yet Cisco is going one step further by embracing an approach to AI computing centered on Ethernet and networking fabrics. These technologies could help handle the scale the speed demanded by data- and compute-intensive AI workloads. To this end, Cisco has partnered with chip leaders like Nvidia to help businesses manage AI clusters and deployments more easily. 

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The pharma giant is partnering with companies to speed up drug discovery using AI. These efforts extend across its core R&D focus areas, including immunology and oncology.

The company is also leveraging partnerships and investments to enhance clinical trials and bring its 75+ clinical-stage projects to market more quickly. For example, Sanofi Ventures led a Series B round for Nucleai, which uses AI to help drugmakers understand how patients will respond to their drugs and, as a result, select the most suitable patients for clinical trials.

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While Nvidia initially developed its graphics processing units (GPUs) for gaming, these chips turned out to be ideal for powering AI tasks. Now, the company is focusing its efforts on providing the computing hardware — notably its A100 and H100 GPUs — and the software infrastructure required for developing generative AI applications.

Amid the generative AI rush, Nvidia has grown rapidly. In fact, it recently surpassed Microsoft and Apple to become the world’s most valuable company. To bolster its leadership position and keep ahead of AI computing competitors like AMD and Intel, Nvidia has forged relationships with companies across the AI landscape.

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To do that, the company is prioritizing growth opportunities that augment its core business, with recent actions laddering up to broad themes like improving decision-making in claims and underwriting.

Notably, M&A activity is absent from Nationwide’s strategy. Instead, it grows its network of relationships through investments — at the corporate level and through its CVC arm, Nationwide Ventures — and partnerships.

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It’s tackling the issue on all fronts, from investing in AI-enabled care models via Google Ventures, to forging partnerships through its Google Cloud division, to launching new products that tailor generative AI to healthcare use cases.

These moves seek not only to address the challenges facing the sector, but also to strategically differentiate Google from big tech peers like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Amazon — all of whom are making concerted efforts to integrate AI into healthcare.

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The data management company has seen a surge in demand from enterprises clambering to take advantage of generative AI. The company’s revenue grew to $1.6B for the fiscal year ending in January 2024 — up over 50% YoY — and it has looked to sustain its growth with product expansion and acquisitions. 

One of the company’s biggest recent moves was its acquisition of MosaicML in June 2023 for a whopping $1.3B (at a 65x revenue multiple). The MosaicML team ultimately helped build Databricks’ open-source large language model (LLM), DBRX, which it released in March 2024. 

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The tech giant found a major entry point into healthcare workflows when it acquired Nuance for $19.7B in 2022. It followed up on this by expanding its existing relationship with leading EHR vendor Epic to introduce generative AI across clinical workflows, with the aim of improving provider efficiency and mitigating staffing shortages.

Microsoft’s recent relationships also point to an increasing focus on developing and deploying generative AI in the pharmaceutical industry. The tech behemoth is partnering with and investing in startups in drug development, where early applications of generative AI have seen especially strong investor and commercial traction.

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The company has faced multiple high-profile incidents over the past 6 years — including crashes involving its planes and a fuselage blowout. This series of events has resulted in a decline in consumer trust, aggravated airlines, and lost sales to rival Airbus.

Amid these challenges, Boeing has shaken up its corporate leadership and moved to improve its manufacturing quality. For instance, the company is exploring a reintegration with Spirit AeroSystems to help address production flaws.

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To reach that goal, the pharma giant is investing internally — it has 178 projects in the pipeline and spent nearly $11B on R&D last year, up 12% from 2022 — as well as looking to emerging technologies that can help it fire on all cylinders.

AstraZeneca has been strategically partnering with companies offering AI drug discovery, diagnostics, and real-world data to help offset some of the cost of drug development and speed up the process. For example, it signed a $247M deal with Absci in December 2023 to develop generative AI-designed antibody therapies for cancer.

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Its corporate venture arm, MassMutual Ventures, was among the top 25 most active CVC firms in 2023, backing 22 companies. Insurance sales are MassMutual’s foundational growth driver, so the company prioritizes investments to serve policyholders — and sell more insurance. 

But its reach extends far beyond core life insurance. The company also offers annuities, retirement plans, and other financial products to businesses and consumers.

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The company maintains a robust internal combustion portfolio, but it has aggressively invested across the entire vehicle electrification ecosystem. Despite scaling back its EV production goals to account for fluctuating consumer demand, GM remains committed to electric vehicles and plans to have the capacity to produce 1M EVs by 2025.

Meanwhile, GM has also pulled back from fully autonomous driving by reducing spending on Cruise — its autonomous vehicle (AV) subsidiary — and moved investments away from AV companies. However, the company has retained its focus on its advanced driver assistance system (ADAS), Super Cruise.

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Its planned $35B acquisition of Discover Financial, announced in February 2024, would make Capital One the owner of Discover’s payments network and open the door to more high-spending, low-risk customers. It would also make Capital One the largest card issuer in the US with 19% of the revolving consumer loan market, ahead of current leader JP Morgan Chase’s 16%.

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While the sportswear leader’s focus on direct sales channels helped it amass a sizable digital loyalty program, it wasn’t enough to compensate for the loss of third-party retail customers and the cost of running its own D2C business.

Now, the brand is developing cost-cutting plans, returning to e-commerce marketplaces, and working to grow its NikePlus loyalty program — where members spend significantly more than the average customer.

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The company first introduced electric vehicles (EVs) in 2013 with its i3 vehicle. Since then, the automaker has continued to leverage investments and partnerships to develop its EV models as well as pursue its ambitions in autonomous vehicles, such as via its collaboration with NVIDIA.

Looking ahead, BMW is aiming to introduce solid-state batteries in vehicles after 2025, a leap forward in battery technology that is expected to bring down the costs of EVs while also increasing their range. The company is leaning on investments and partnerships with companies like Solid Power to reach that goal. Further, the automaker is building its expertise in areas like grid tech to help support the rollout of electric vehicles.

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At the heart of its growth strategy is the integration of AI. In 2017, the company founded the Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence — a global team dedicated to advanced AI research — while investing over $100M+ into a new AI campus. The company’s 2025 goal is to incorporate AI in all of its products or develop them using AI.

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Healthcare isn’t an entirely new sector for Nvidia. It invested in healthcare-focused computer vision startup Zebra Medical Vision, for instance, back in 2017.

In the past few years, however, its investments and partnerships have coalesced into a clear strategy, as the chipmaker builds on its work in advanced computing to lay the foundation for next-gen AI applications in health IT. For instance, it has redoubled efforts in areas like edge computing, which makes it easier to deploy AI in care settings where broadband internet connectivity is limited or nonexistent.

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In the past 2 years, it has established key partnerships with tech giants like Microsoft, Nvidia, and Google to give its clients access to custom generative AI capabilities, AI toolkits, and more.

Accenture also recently announced it will invest $3B in AI by 2026, including doubling its AI talent to 80,000 employees. As part of this investment, the consulting giant announced the launch of a network of generative AI studios to help its clients deploy the tech.

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The e-commerce giant has long had far-reaching financial ambitions, including introducing its own financial tools (e.g., credit cards, checking accounts, and lending) — not to mention its cashierless checkout tech for physical stores.

However, it has narrowed its focus in the past couple years, driven by a heightened need to find profitable and defensible pathways to growth.

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Across these businesses, the company leans heavily into what it calls “risk partnerships” to help it create new products and improve its understanding of evolving spaces — such as its collaboration with Microsoft for connected vehicle-related risks.

Using CB Insights data, we uncovered the 3 most important strategic priorities highlighted by Swiss Re’s recent investments and partnerships. We then categorized companies by their business relationships with Swiss Re across these priorities.

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