E-commerce software provider Shopify is bullish on AI-powered shopping agents, calling AI an “incredible tool” to enable more entrepreneurs in its third-quarter earnings call and calling it “the biggest technology change since the Internet.” The company, which partnered with ChatGPT maker OpenAI in September, reported a 7x increase in traffic to its online store from AI tools and an 11x increase in purchase value from AI-powered searches since January of this year.
Harley Finkelstein, president of Shopify, said the company’s advantage in the AI era lies in its ability to access data from millions of merchants and billions of transactions, and its “founder mode” mentality to ship products quickly.
This includes internal tools like Scout, which uses AI to help Shopify employees search feedback from hundreds of millions of sellers and make better product decisions.
“And Scout is just one of the many tools we’re building to turn unique signals, such as support tickets, usage data, reviews, social interactions, and even Sidekick prompts, into faster, more informed decisions,” Finkelstein said on the conference call. “If there’s one thing you take away from this call, it’s that AI is more than just a feature of Shopify. It’s at the heart of the engine that powers everything we build.
In addition to ChatGPT, Shopify is working with Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot on other in-chat shopping experiences. According to a recent Shopify survey, 64% of shoppers say they are “likely” to use AI to some extent when making a purchase.
“We have built and invested in this infrastructure to make it easy to incorporate shopping into any AI conversation,” Finkelstein said. “I think the fact that we’re already working with leaders in this space is evidence of the fact that we want to make sure that Shopify merchants are better prepared than merchants that aren’t. It’s obviously still very early days,” he continued. “But what we’re really trying to do is lay the rails for agent commerce.”
While the company is currently focused on building connections with AI agents, it is also preparing for the fact that there will be “a lot of variation” in how agent commerce evolves, Finkelstein said, and it needs to be prepared for “which path wins.”
tech crunch event
san francisco
|
October 13-15, 2026
“It was the same thing when social commerce started getting a lot of attention, or[when people realized]it’s not e-commerce and physical commerce, but… this idea of commerce is everywhere,” he added.
Separately, Shopify’s third-quarter results beat expectations with revenue up 32% to $2.84 billion and profit of $264 million, or 20 cents per share. However, the stock price fell on news that the company’s operating profit of $434 million was lower than the expected $437 million.
