If elected at a shareholder meeting next month, Taylor will replace John Phillips, an early angel investor in Shopify, as an independent director of the Ottawa-headquartered commerce company. (The Logic)

Talking point: Taylor is a bold-faced name in Silicon Valley, for both his executive and board work. The former Facebook CTO joined Salesforce in August 2016, when it paid US$750 million for Quip, a productivity app he co-founded. Taylor rapidly rose up the ranks at the San Francisco-based SaaS giant, becoming co-CEO in November 2021. Mooted as co-founder Marc Benioff’s successor, he exited Salesforce in January; he’s now working on a stealth AI startup. Taylor also served as the last chair of publicly traded Twitter, and was the face of the board’s battle to force Elon Musk to go through with his takeover of the bird app. He brings Shopify experience selling to large enterprises as well as new AI expertise, both areas where CEO Tobi Lütke has been pushing the company. Taylor would be the second former Facebook executive on the board at Shopify, after Instacart CEO Fidji Simo joined in December 2021.