When Steve Iarocci considers Grubhub’s business strength, he thinks of hundreds of hungry fans in a crowded sports stadium, waiting for food to be delivered before the next quarter begins.
According to the senior director of client success and sales, the food delivery company is “best-in-class” when it comes to supporting “closed ecosystem” environments such as sports stadiums and college campuses. After Grubhub was acquired by food delivery startup Wonder earlier this year, the company is in an even better position to bring its seamless ordering technology to the masses, signaling its growing prominence in the industry.
“Our ability to execute at over 400 schools and over 9,000 hospitality locations is evidence of how strong our value proposition is,” Iarocci said.
Business durability can take many forms, depending on where a company is at in its growth journey. At electronics software provider Altium, a new professional services organization represents the company’s growing capacity to support the needs of its enterprise customers.
“In a short time, we have not only built the organization from the ground up but have also introduced new service offerings, modernized existing ones, and delivered a clear, customer-centric model aligned with our mission: to be a trusted partner delivering innovative solutions that accelerate success, streamline design to production processes, and enable collaboration at every stage,” Vice President of Professional Services Codie Cobb said.
With an increasing number of Altium’s customers adopting its solutions since the org’s launch, it’s clear that the professional services division has had a profound impact on the business.
AI application development company Runpod has encountered a similar amount of growth over the past year. Justin Mongroo, chief operating officer and chief revenue officer, shared that more AI developers continue to adopt the company’s platform, with roughly 500,000 of them currently using it to build AI solutions.
“This velocity has held strong and best demonstrates that the thesis from the beginning has held true: Make it easier for AI developers to build and launch AI systems that scale,” he said.
Below, Iarocci, Cobb and Mongroo, along with employees from three other companies, share more about the metrics and milestones that capture their employers’ strength this year and which leading indicators they’re eager to watch as their organizations continue to grow.
Altium’s software tools are designed to support printed circuit board designers, part suppliers and manufacturers, enabling them to develop and manufacture electronics faster and more efficiently.
What metric/milestone best captures strength this year?
For me, the most meaningful metric of strength this year has been the successful launch, stabilization and rapid growth of Altium’s professional services org. When I joined a little over a year ago, professional services was a new concept for Altium, an investment to better support the evolving needs of our enterprise customers.
In a short time, we have not only built the organization from the ground up but have also introduced new service offerings, modernized existing ones, and delivered a clear, customer-centric model aligned with our mission: To be a trusted partner delivering innovative solutions that accelerate success, streamline design to production processes, and enable collaboration at every stage.
Ultimately, stickiness is the strongest indicator of long-term strength for both our customers and Altium’s ecosystem as a whole. It shows that the foundations we’ve built in professional services are not only supporting customer success today but are also enabling the kind of stability and scalable growth that will define the next chapter for Altium and the customers we serve.
Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?
What truly sets us apart is how we combine a robust platform with a hands-on professional services team dedicated to helping customers achieve real, measurable results. While plenty of companies offer tools, few actually partner with their customers to drive real change. That’s where we make the difference.
“What truly sets us apart is how we combine a robust platform with a hands-on professional services team dedicated to helping customers achieve real, measurable results.”
Our biggest wins happen when our platform’s power meets expert partnership, and our customers prove it every day. They’re adopting our solutions more widely, planning bigger rollouts and relying on Altium for the long haul as a key part of their engineering workflows.
What expansion bet excites you — and what leading indicator will you watch?
The expansion opportunity I’m most excited about is the continued evolution of our enterprise services and the growing demand for guided transformation across the electronics industry. As more organizations shift to connected, collaborative design environments, they’re looking for more than a platform; they’re looking for a partner who can help them modernize processes, integrate complex ecosystems, and scale their engineering operations with confidence. That’s exactly where professional services becomes a force multiplier.
The leading indicator I’m watching closely is the rate at which customers expand their engagement after initial deployment. That post-implementation expansion is the strongest proof that our model is working and the clearest predictor of long-term growth for both Altium and the customers we serve.
Grubhub offers a food ordering app that’s used by over 33 million people.
What metric/milestone best captures strength this year?
While going forward there will be more and more overlap of growth/milestones between the Grubhub Onsite and Wonder For Business units, in 2025, they each had distinct and exciting wins. Grubhub’s Onsite — the company’s campus and hospitality service — broke half a million daily orders for the first time ever and has consistently seen that number achieved through the back part of the year. Wonder For Business has made the incredible leap from a purely “white-labeled” offering to now having an end-to-end licensed concept where business partners can implement a turnkey solution for today’s discerning diners.
Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?
This organization is best-in-class when it comes to providing a premier digital dining platform for what we call “closed ecosystem” environments. Think campuses, hotels, stadiums and more that have captive audiences looking for delicious food but need it provided in a very narrow window of time. With the addition of Wonder For Business’ high throughput back-of-house offering and Grubhub’s seamless ordering technology, there’s no reason a student shouldn’t be able to get their meal between classes or for a fan to never miss a play during the big game! Our ability to execute at over 400 schools and over 9,000 hospitality locations is evidence of how strong our value proposition is.
“This organization is best-in-class when it comes to providing a premier digital dining platform for what we call ‘closed ecosystem’ environments. Think campuses, hotels, stadiums and more that have captive audiences looking for delicious food but need it provided in a very narrow window of time.”
What expansion bet excites you — and what leading indicator will you watch?
The need for more efficient operations has always existed in the world of closed ecosystem environments, and that need will only grow in the future. So, the ability to take Grubhub’s ordering and fulfillment technology with Wonder’s cutting-edge cooking and robotics programs means that our partners can focus on meeting diners where they are and making delicious food more accessible. I am extremely excited for the coming year to scale the Wonder offering at Grubhub accounts and vice versa so that our partners can have a truly integrated dining program at their fingertips.
Runpod’s cloud infrastructure enables teams to train, fine-tune and deploy AI models.
What metric/milestone best captures strength this year?
It’s our continued developer adoption with roughly 500,000 using the platform to bring their AI ideas to life. This velocity has held strong and best demonstrates that the thesis from the beginning has held true: Make it easier for AI developers to build and launch AI systems that scale.
Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?
We are built by developers, for developers. We see this in the breadth of use cases deployed on Runpod; nearly every major dev tool, both new and mature, and both large and small models have been used in conjunction on Runpod to build AI systems that scale. From training and fine-tuning to inference and production, developers continue to push the limits of AI with Runpod.
“From training and fine-tuning to inference and production, developers continue to push the limits of AI with Runpod.”
However, what is perhaps the most invigorating is that we see the developers ranging from hobbyists to startups to large enterprises, and have been able to meet the needs across the spectrum. Being close to the people and ideas that go from a figment of imagination to a proof of concept and, ultimately, production is not only about competition but the right place to be for the maturity of the market and innovation to come. We remain committed to focusing on the people and communities that make AI “real.”
What expansion bet excites you — and what leading indicator will you watch?
We are excited about our increased ability to support larger organizations both from a product and support/services perspective. This readiness and increased capabilities extend value to our builders and developers. While many are still looking for pay-as-you-go as they establish/validate their ideas, there is a substantial cohort looking at Runpod as an ongoing partnership and critical cornerstone for their AI development stack. They are relying on us to help them not only power their AI systems but also serve as the connectivity layer to that required “compute” and solve complex projects together. We are becoming engrained in their dev lifecycle and business strategy overall. The indicators we see and continue to focus on are an increase in the volume of models and systems used on the platform, and requests to be extended, as the software, on top of infrastructure, regardless of location/provider.
Gradient AI serves clients that specialize in group health, property and casualty insurance and workers’ compensation, offering AI solutions that perform tasks like predicting underwriting and claim risks and reducing quote turnaround times and claim expenses.
What metric/milestone best captures strength this year?
A 50 percent year-over-year increase in the volume moving through our platform. In other words, we’re seeing significantly more cases and data flowing through our solution than last year. This is one of the clearest indicators of our overall strength; it shows strong user adoption, confirms that customers are finding real value, and demonstrates that our platform can scale as demand grows.
Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?
Our biggest competitive strength is SAIL, our industry-leading health risk prediction model. Its accuracy and the quality of the insights it provides truly set us apart. Our rapid growth and customer adoption are strong proof of that differentiation.
“Our biggest competitive strength is SAIL, our industry-leading health risk prediction model. Its accuracy and the quality of the insights it provides truly set us apart.”
What expansion bet excites you — and what leading indicator will you watch?
I’m most excited about expanding how our actionable risk-identification capabilities are used across healthcare. We’re evolving from a single point solution into a fully integrated platform that helps risk-bearing organizations, like health insurers, identify and manage risk across the entire member lifecycle.
Sysco LABS is the innovation arm of foodservice provider Sysco. Its teams develop e-commerce solutions that help the company’s customers browse products and place orders, track orders in real time and gain insight into their accounts.
What metric/milestone best captures strength this year?
Year after year, Sysco’s biggest milestones are focused on how we’re doing right by our customers, and how we’re connecting customers with the right products at the right place and getting them delivered right on time.
Like most of the tech sector in 2025, AI is the bedrock of our innovation throughout the year. And we’re really proud of the ways Sysco LABS is exploring and executing on making these tools empower not just our customers but who they rely on — our Sysco representatives.
It’s clear that the way customers order is evolving as we all get used to generative search results and learn to trust AI agents to help with purchase decisions and transactions, but we know the technology alone is not going to make growth happen. We have to change our mindsets and make it happen together.
Our latest innovations, ultimately, ensure we’re better equipped to drive that connection toward a more helpful, equitable, beneficial, human-to-human experience — with AI-powered designs that deliver smarter, faster and more useful answers to customer questions and requests. This is the foundation for our customer experience at Sysco: creating B2C-like experiences for our B2B customers.
Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?
Sysco’s history, size and the experience of our colleagues. That breadth of knowledge and experience fuels our product and engineering creativity, which in turn provides the go-to-market speed and the quality of outcomes necessary to stay steps ahead of our competitors and amaze our customers with the solutions they need to grow their business.
We’ve been part of the rapid evolution of GenAI into agentic AI, working closely with AI industry leaders to try, test and adapt these technologies to create new experiences for our customers and sales consultants. Because of the speed of change in technology, it is very easy to get immersed and lost in the technical aspects of the work. There’s so many interesting advancements and different proofs of concept to try that it’s hard to stay focused and avoid distractions with the new greatest thing of the week.
“We’ve been part of the rapid evolution of GenAI into agentic AI, working closely with AI industry leaders to try, test and adapt these technologies to create new experiences for our customers and sales consultants.”
Although we’ve been doing a great job navigating this sea of change and complexity that the agentic AI industry has become, our main challenge in engineering remains keeping focus where it belongs — on our customers — and to drive the passionate, customer-focused culture that keeps us the world’s largest foodservice distributor.
What expansion bet excites you — and what leading indicator will you watch?
That depth and breadth of data and insight fuels our newly launched AI360, an AI-powered tool for sales and customer engagement for Sysco representatives. With streamlined workflows, real-time insights and proactive recommendations, we’re given more time to understand our customers’ needs, deliver value, and build meaningful, reliable relationships.
We’ve simplified our team’s experience into a user-friendly, mobile-optimized platform consolidating deals, programs, pertinent insights, suggested actions and programs to connect better across customer visits and face-to-face interactions to deliver the best available opportunities tailored to each customer. This exemplifies how technology can create meaningful change and positive disruption, driven by AI, to empower our business and achieve the growth we’re committed to delivering.
The true basis of success we’re aiming for is looking at local sales and customer longevity, and that second part comes from our relationships. Even with all these innovations, we don’t need an AI agent to tell us that the more a customer buys and the more they sell, the more we’re able to support their continued growth and success.
EDGE, a NinjaHoldings brand, offers a platform that measures consumer credit risk by leveraging data related to income, spending and balance history.
What metric/milestone best captures strength this year?
The clearest validation of EDGE’s strength comes from measurable outcomes. Magnolia FCU has expanded lending to members with credit scores as low as 450 while outperforming peer credit unions in both delinquency and charge-off rates. They also removed tax returns from nearly all consumer loan applications, cutting verification time from days to minutes and increasing decision speed across their team. These results show that when lenders use cashflow analytics to evaluate true ability to pay, they can safely approve more members, reduce manual work, and achieve stronger portfolio performance. The data speaks for itself.
Where are you strongest competitively — and what proof backs that?
EDGE is strongest where friction matters most. Our loan origination system integrations, direct core integrations and open banking partnerships, including MX, give credit unions a way to access member data without relying on credential-based connections that often cause abandonment. That low-friction design is a real competitive differentiator: Magnolia FCU was live in just two weeks, and lenders now verify income instantly without paystubs or manual calculations. The result is a faster, cleaner member experience and underwriting that’s both more accurate and more inclusive. When you combine that simplicity with CRA-grade compliance and real-time cashflow intelligence, it becomes clear why credit unions view EDGE as a modern alternative to legacy vendors.
“That low-friction design is a real competitive differentiator: Magnolia FCU was live in just two weeks, and lenders now verify income instantly without paystubs or manual calculations.”
What expansion bet excites you — and what leading indicator will you watch?
Our most exciting expansion bet is taking cashflow analytics beyond underwriting and embedding it directly into servicing and collections. Continuous, real-time cashflow signals give lenders the ability to spot member hardship before any delinquency appears, which strengthens relationships and protects portfolios. We also believe cashflow underwriting itself is becoming a mainstream method for determining loan eligibility, no longer a niche idea or a supplement to a credit score.
Since we began championing this approach, it has moved from being relatively unknown, to widely discussed, to something the largest players and even the major credit bureaus have begun incorporating. The leading indicator we are watching is the percentage of partners who adopt always-on cashflow monitoring as a core operational practice. As more institutions rely on real-time financial behavior rather than historical static snapshots, the future of lending becomes more accurate, more inclusive and more resilient.
