Shopify: Personal AI agent traffic starting to surge

Shopify is seeing commerce traffic from personal AI agents from Meta Muse, Claude Duet and others surge.

Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify, said:

"Since our last earnings call, personal agents hit the mainstream, and Muse, Instinct, Claude Duet, Grok Bot, all partner with Shopify. So our merchants checkouts are supported and buyers can use Shop Pay as their wallet. And we're powering product discovery across all major AI channels from ChatGPT to Microsoft to Muse. These are the things that could drive real merchant success in the future."

Finkelstein said agentic AI shopping today is small, but adoption is growing and "the early signals show this is the potential to become a very powerful surface area."

He added that Shopify is seeing AI traffic up 2.6 times in the third quarter and orders are growing at a 3.3 times clip. "AI channels are sending shoppers straight to product pages at 3x the rate of organic search and shoppers are converting 64% more often," said Finkelstein. "What's even more interesting is what products are being surfaced and it's not the obvious categories. AI channels are surfacing highly specific products that fit specific customers with a specific need."

Shopify Catalog powered searches are converting at 2x the rate of general AI search because the catalog is written for AI agents. Shopify Catalog turns more than 1 billion product pages into a structured data set that agents can read and understand.

Finkelstein noted the following:

• AI is no longer just about discovery and more shoppers are experimenting with delegated purchasing through AI agents.
• Shopify is enabling agents to understand preferences and shopping history through the Shop app.
• Merchants will have expanded reach with a new pool of customers.
• Developers can connect to Shopify via multiple connectors to AI agents.

Finkelstein said the goal is to be the underlying commerce infrastructure behind personal agent shopping.

"In the new world of personal agents, shop is not just a wallet. It is your complete buyer profile. So when you connect shop to Muse, Instinct, or Claude Duet, or Grok Bot, the agent gets 3 things. First of all, it gets your entire shopping history across any Shopify merchants who can deliver these incredibly personalized recommendations. Second, with Shop Pay gets save payment details, you can pay the way you want with confidence, the agent doesn't get that information. And then the connection to the Shop app means even afterwards, you're able to track everything you purchased. So the fact that we have 400 million shoppers already trusting Shop and Shop Pay, now that trust goes with them into every single agent. We think that's really important."

But Shopify isn't just playing for the agentic commerce future. It is also looking to be a commerce operating system that extends into retailers and brands such as MAC, Clinique and Lululemon. Shopify is winning deals that consolidate commerce engines and that's driving results today as it builds for tomorrow.

Shopify reported third quarter net income of $462 million, or 36 cents a share, on revenue of $3.74 billion, up 32% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings in the third quarter were 49 cents a share. Shopify projected fourth quarter revenue growth in the low 30% range.