April 22, 2022
As recently reported, Shopify invested in the American artificial intelligence start-up, Crossing Minds, which marks the company’s first investment in an AI-powered recommendation platform. Shopify’s manager of corporate development stated that the investment will help Shopify merchants to “meet customer’s evolving needs” by providing recommendations and more personalized experiences. Both Shopify and Crossing Minds representatives declined to confirm how much Shopify invested, but did state that the investment was “substantial”.
The Crossing Mind deal represents Shopify’s continued interest and investment in acquisitions of tech start ups. Shopify has previously invested in Vancouver accounting firm Bench, Israel-based e-commerce marketing company Yotpo and US customer relationship software start-up Loop. The company also holds stakes in American payment processing firms Stripe and Affirm.
Crossing Minds was founded in 2017 and although it is based in San Francisco, the company has an office in Toronto that houses five of its 22 employees. Crossing Minds’ platform uses AI to help businesses build stronger relationships with their customers by delivering recommendations that do not use personal customer data or third-party cookies. Crossing Minds plans to invest the capital from Shopify’s investment in “Canada, R&D and building the team” and specifically, to create “automatic machine learning” to make the start-up’s platform more scalable.
By: Matthew Erdman
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