Businesses increasingly need to work together without merging. Two companies might want to combine complementary skills, share resources, or jointly pursue opportunities for clients — without forming a joint venture, partnership, or new corporate entity. This pattern shows up across every region. In Europe, SAP and Google Cloud operate under a long-running strategic partnership, significantly expanded in 2021 and repeatedly deepened since, most recently in April 2026 to jointly deploy multi-agent AI tools across their platforms — with each company remaining fully independent throughout, contributing its own technology under a framework of agreed, evolving integrations rather than shared ownership.