Canada’s biggest tech company seems to be adjusting pretty well to the new era of online shopping.
What happened: Shopify shares soared as high as 25% yesterday after releasing its earnings from a banner second quarter. The Canadian e-commerce giant saw a 34% year-over-year increase in revenue and a more than 30% jump in merchant transaction volume, driven in part by AI chatbots directing more people to its online stores.
Shopify has recently launched a number of AI products and tools, partnering with OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft to help merchants increase their visibility in AI search results.
The company said AI-driven traffic to its merchants’ online storefronts had grown significantly in the last year, with orders from AI-powered searches increasing nearly 13-fold.
Why it matters: Chatbots and agents are transforming how we shop online, with AI firms quickly becoming the gatekeepers of which products we’re exposed to (and thus what we buy). A recent National Bank survey found that over one in three Canadians are using AI to make purchasing decisions.
The early results suggest Shopify has figured out how to get its merchants’ products in front of consumers in this new era of AI shopping.
Our take: By some estimates, AI agents could account for up to 20% of the entire online shopping market by 2030. Figuring out how to get those agents to organically point to a brand or product is likely the next frontier of the ~US$100 billion SEO industry.—LA
