Will Morgan Stanley's Strategic Collaborations Drive Long-Term Growth?

For Morgan Stanley MS, collaborations have become a key pillar of long-term growth. By partnering with technology firms, digital-asset infrastructure providers and private-market platforms, the global investment bank is expanding its capabilities, improving operational efficiency and entering new markets.

These partnerships are expected to strengthen its competitive position and support sustainable expansion over the coming years.

Some Notable Morgan Stanley Collaborations

In January 2026, Morgan Stanley acquired EquityZen, a platform for trading shares of private companies, reflecting its strategy to deepen exposure to high-growth private firms that are staying private longer. The platform connects investors with employees and early stakeholders seeking liquidity, enabling the bank to broaden investment opportunities for its wealth-management clients.

In September 2025, Morgan Stanley teamed up with crypto infrastructure provider Zerohash to enable cryptocurrency trading on its E*TRADE platform. Under this partnership, MS plans to allow E*TRADE clients to trade major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ether and Solana, with the rollout expected to begin in the first half of 2026. Zerohash will provide the backend infrastructure for crypto trading, including services, such as liquidity, custody and settlement. The move reflects Morgan Stanley’s broader strategy to expand into digital assets and compete with platforms that already offer crypto trading, while integrating digital assets into its existing wealth-management and retail-brokerage ecosystem.

Morgan Stanley has also developed a long-standing partnership with Snowflake, a data-cloud company that powers many of the bank’s analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives. Over the past several years, the collaboration has evolved from basic data warehousing to advanced AI-driven workloads that enhance customer insights, operational efficiency and regulatory compliance.

Along with the above-mentioned collaborations, Morgan Stanley’s partnership with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. is expected to keep supporting profitability. In 2023, the companies announced plans to deepen their 15-year alliance by merging certain operations within their Japanese brokerage joint ventures. The new alliance saw combined Japanese equity research, sales and execution services for institutional clients at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities and Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities.

Overall, strategic collaborations allow Morgan Stanley to access new technologies, markets and client segments without building every capability internally. If these collaborations continue to deliver new products, efficiencies and revenue opportunities, they will play a significant role in supporting Morgan Stanley’s long-term expansion.

Morgan Stanley’s Competitive Landscape

Peers of Morgan Stanley like Goldman Sachs GS and JPMorgan JPM have also entered collaborations to strengthen their technology capabilities, expand lending platforms and improve client services. These partnerships illustrate how large investment banks are increasingly relying on alliances to accelerate innovation and market expansion.

Goldman Sachs has pursued multiple partnerships to expand its digital and consumer banking ecosystem. One of its most notable collaborations is with Apple to launch the Apple Card, combining Goldman Sachs’ banking infrastructure with Apple’s large consumer ecosystem and digital wallet technology.

The partnership helped Goldman Sachs enter consumer finance while offering users integrated mobile credit services and advanced financial-management tools.

JPMorgan has collaborated with fintech firms to enhance lending and payments capabilities. For example, the bank partnered with OnDeck to streamline small-business lending. By using OnDeck’s digital loan-processing technology, JPMorgan has been able to speed up approval times and improve access to credit for small businesses, strengthening its position in the commercial lending market.

Morgan Stanley’s Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

In the past six months, the company’s shares have gained 2.5% against the industry’s 2.4% decline.

From a valuation standpoint, MS trades at a 12-month forward price-to-earnings (P/E) of 14.27X, above the industry average of 13.03X.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Morgan Stanley’s 2026 earnings suggests an 8.6% rise on a year-over-year basis, while 2027 earnings are expected to grow 7%. In the past 30 days, earnings estimates for 2026 and 2027 have moved upward.

Currently, MS carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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