Key Takeaways
Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital has taken a roughly $100 million stake in Shopify, a contrarian public-market investment that bets on artificial intelligence to reverse the fortunes of a stock that has fallen 40 percent this year. The move signals a belief that the e-commerce giant’s AI initiatives are undervalued after its recent guidance suggested slowing growth.
Thrive framed the investment to its stakeholders as a bet on how artificial intelligence could drive gains in commerce, according to a Bloomberg report. The firm, which raised a new $10 billion fund in February, is known for backing private technology giants like OpenAI and Stripe, making its purchase of a public stock notable.
The investment comes after Shopify’s shares slumped, despite first-quarter revenue growing 34.3 percent year-on-year to $3.17 billion. The company’s second-quarter guidance implied a deceleration to roughly 27.5 percent growth, and operating profit forecasts came in below expectations, punishing the stock. Thrive’s purchase suggests it views the sell-off as an entry point, not a warning sign.
At stake is whether AI can fundamentally reshape the economics of online retail. Thrive is underwriting the thesis that Shopify’s push into “agentic commerce”—allowing merchants to sell directly inside AI chat platforms—will create a new growth cycle that the market is currently failing to price in. The risk is that the slowdown is structural, as Shopify faces rising competition from Amazon, Temu, and a new wave of AI-native platforms.
This investment is part of a larger trend where venture firms are crossing over into public equities. Startups are taking longer to go public, and private AI valuations have soared, making beaten-down public companies appear to offer better risk-adjusted returns. Thrive itself has a successful precedent: in March 2022, it bought into the distressed online car retailer Carvana, later realizing a $522 million profit on the trade, according to Bloomberg. Other firms, including Accel and Sequoia Capital, have made similar public-market investments.
Shopify’s strategy centers on moving upmarket to court larger retailers and embedding AI into its core platform. The company reported that AI-driven orders on its platform grew 15 times year-on-year in 2025. The bet is that as consumers increasingly use AI assistants for shopping, the infrastructure connecting merchants to those assistants—which Shopify is building—will become critical. This aligns with moves from partners like Affirm, in which Shopify holds a significant stake, who are also building for an AI-driven commerce future. Thrive’s investment is a wager that this AI-powered future will arrive sooner and be more lucrative than the current stock price implies.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
