According to TechCrunch, Shopify is going all-in on AI-powered shopping, calling it the “biggest shift in technology since the internet.” The company reported that traffic from AI tools to its stores has skyrocketed 7x since January, while purchases attributed to AI-powered search have exploded by 11x. President Harley Finkelstein emphasized that AI isn’t just a feature but “central to our engine that powers everything we build.” The company, which partnered with OpenAI in September, also revealed strong Q3 results with revenue up 32% to $2.84 billion and profit of $264 million. However, the stock dipped slightly after operating income of $434 million narrowly missed estimates.
The Agentic Commerce Revolution
Shopify isn’t just dabbling in AI—they’re building what they call “agentic commerce,” and the early numbers suggest they might be onto something huge. An 11x increase in AI-driven purchases in less than a year? That’s not just growth, that’s a fundamental shift in how people are shopping. Basically, they’re laying the groundwork for AI shopping assistants to become the new storefronts, and they want to be the infrastructure that powers all of it.
Here’s the thing that makes Shopify’s position interesting: they’ve got access to data from millions of merchants and billions of transactions. That’s their secret weapon. While other companies are building AI in isolation, Shopify can train their models on real commerce data at massive scale. Their internal tool Scout already uses AI to analyze hundreds of millions of merchant feedback points—imagine what they can do when that capability gets rolled out to merchants and shoppers.
Betting Everything on AI Conversations
Shopify’s strategy is fascinating because they’re not trying to build the best AI chatbot themselves. Instead, they’re partnering with everyone—OpenAI, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot—to make sure shopping works seamlessly within any AI conversation. It’s a smart play. Why fight the AI giants when you can become the commerce layer that powers all of them?
And their survey data backs this up—64% of shoppers said they’re likely to use AI when making purchases. That number feels almost conservative given how quickly people are adopting these tools. Think about it: we’re moving from typing search queries into Google to having conversations with AI assistants that understand exactly what we want. Shopify wants to be the platform that makes those conversations result in actual purchases.
Still Early, But the Rails Are Laid
Finkelstein was careful to note that it’s “still obviously very, very early” in this shift. They’re preparing for “different permutations” of how agentic commerce will evolve, which is corporate speak for “we don’t know exactly how this will play out, but we’ll be ready no matter what.” That flexibility served them well during the social commerce boom, and it looks like they’re applying the same playbook here.
The financial results show they’ve got the breathing room to make these big bets. Revenue growth of 32% is impressive for a company of their size, even if investors got spooked by that slight operating income miss. But let’s be real—when you’re talking about fundamental technology shifts, sometimes you need to invest ahead of the curve. Their Sidekick tool and other AI initiatives are clearly part of that investment.
So what does this mean for the future? We’re looking at a world where AI shopping agents could become our primary way of discovering and buying products. Shopify’s massive head start in commerce data and their partnership-heavy approach positions them perfectly for that future. The stock might have dipped on the earnings news, but long-term investors should be watching whether they can turn these early AI wins into sustainable competitive advantage. If these growth rates continue, we might look back at 2024 as the year AI shopping went mainstream.
