Shopify Inc. (SHOP) GMV Growth Reaccelerates as AI Integration Strengthens Investment Case

Sands Capital Management, LLC's Technology Innovators Fund released its Q4 2025 investor letter for "Technology Innovators Fund". The Fund delivered mixed performance during the fourth quarter of 2025, as market returns were increasingly driven by a narrow group of large-cap growth stocks, with the portfolio’s top ten holdings accounting for roughly 59% of assets, while several high-valuation innovation names faced pressure from slowing momentum and investor risk aversion. The fund’s results reflected stock-specific challenges rather than broad macroeconomic shocks, with weaker performance in certain emerging technology holdings offset by strength in select platform and infrastructure businesses. During the quarter, the portfolio declined 6.3% on a quarter-to-date basis, and the fund generated a 14.7% return over the one year, reflecting stock-specific challenges rather than broad macroeconomic shocks, with weaker performance in certain emerging technology holdings offset by strength in select platform and infrastructure businesses. Management emphasized its long-term investment horizon, noting an average annual portfolio turnover of 21%, and stated that many portfolio companies continued to generate solid full-year earnings growth in 2025, supported by durable revenue models tied to artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and digital transformation, even as enthusiasm for speculative growth faded late in the quarter. In addition, please check the Fund’s top five holdings to know its best picks in 2025.

In its fourth-quarter 2025 investor letter, Sands Capital Technology Innovators Fund highlighted stocks like Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP). Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP) provides e-commerce infrastructure that enables merchants of all sizes to build, manage, and scale their online stores. The one-month return of Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP) was -4.03% while its shares traded between $69.84 and $182.19 over the last 52 weeks. On February 26, 2026, Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP) stock closed at approximately $125.94 per share, with a market capitalization of about $164.362 billion.

Sands Capital Technology Innovators Fund stated the following regarding Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP) in its Q4 2025 investor letter:

"Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP) is a leading global ecommerce platform enabling the next generation of retail. In the third quarter, gross merchandise value (GMV) rose 28 percent year over year—its strongest growth in four years and twelfth consecutive quarter of stable or accelerating performance. Growth was broad-based across geographies, verticals, and merchant sizes, highlighted by a meaningful acceleration in GMV per merchant and merchant services growth, driven by payments adoption. Wins with brands such as Welch’s and FanDuel underscore momentum up-market. Strong share price performance also likely reflects Shopify increasingly being viewed as an AI beneficiary, set to benefit from its launch of AI-enabled merchant services and product discovery, supported by partnerships OpenAI and improving advertising performance at Meta Platforms."

Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP) is not on our list of 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. As per our database, 101 hedge fund portfolios held Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP) at the end of the fourth quarter, which was 91 in the previous quarter. While we acknowledge the risk and potential of Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP) as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame.

In another article, we covered Shopify Inc. (NASDAQ:SHOP) and shared the list of profitable SaaS companies for 2026. In addition, please check out our hedge fund investor letters Q4 2025 page for more investor letters from hedge funds and other leading investors.

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