The biggest winner in artificial intelligence (AI) shopping may not be the company with the smartest chatbot. It could be the company connecting all those chatbots to products, payments, and checkout.
OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are fighting to become the place consumers start searching. If shopping moves into those conversations, each platform needs merchants willing to sell there.
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A new storefront
Think about what an AI shopping agent needs. A shopper might ask for waterproof hiking boots under $150, compare options, choose a pair, and tell the agent to buy them.
The chatbot needs accurate product descriptions, prices, inventory, payment infrastructure, and a functioning checkout. Building all of that separately for millions of merchants would be a mess.
Shopify (TSX: SHOP) has spent more than 20 years building those pieces. Its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), developed with Google, creates a standard that AI agents can use to move from product discovery through checkout. Shopify Catalog turns products from millions of merchants into structured data that AI systems can search.
Shopify merchants can already reach customers through ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode, and Gemini. Now another major platform has joined the list.
SHOP
Shopify announced this week that Meta’s new Muse AI agent will integrate Shop Pay across Shopify stores. That means a Muse user could discover a product through an AI conversation and complete the purchase without Shopify needing to own the chatbot itself.
The announcement sent Shopify shares sharply higher before some of the gain disappeared the next day. The stock-price reaction isn’t my reason for caring, though. The important development is that another major AI company chose to connect with Shopify’s commerce infrastructure.
Shopify increasingly earns money from merchant activity rather than software subscriptions alone. If AI creates new places to shop, more transactions flowing through Shopify could expand merchant-services revenue instead of bypassing the company. That’s a much more interesting AI thesis than adding a chatbot to an online store.
Follow the transactions
Shopify already has momentum. Second-quarter revenue increased 34% year over year to US$3.6 billion. Gross merchandise volume (GMV), the value of products sold through Shopify’s platform, increased 30% in constant currency. Merchant-solutions revenue grew even faster, rising 37% to US$2.8 billion.
That’s the figure I’d watch. Subscriptions get merchants onto Shopify. Payments, Shop Pay, transaction services, and other merchant tools let Shopify participate when those merchants sell more. AI shopping agents could potentially send more buyers directly to products and shorten the path from “I need something” to “buy it.”
Shopify says product data syndicated through its Catalog produces twice the conversion in AI chats. That’s a company-provided figure, so investors will need longer-term evidence. The direction makes sense, though. For investors interested in Canadian growth stocks, Shopify is becoming less of a bet on website building and more of a bet on the infrastructure underneath digital commerce.
The price problem
Growth comes with a bill. Shopify recently traded at about $200, and trades around 70 times forward earnings. The shares also jumped more than 15% across September 21 and 22 following the Muse news before retreating 3.5% the next day. That’s an unforgiving valuation.
AI shopping is also young. Consumers may prefer traditional websites, regulators could tighten rules around automated purchases, and payment providers could fight aggressively for their own piece of agentic commerce. Shopify also faces a basic competitive risk. If AI platforms build their own commerce infrastructure, they may need Shopify less.
Furthermore, Shopify has strong growth and a narrow economic moat, but very high uncertainty means execution mistakes can become expensive quickly. That’s why I’d treat Shopify as a long-term growth holding rather than a stock to chase after an AI announcement. Investors with sufficient room could hold it inside a Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSA) and let eligible gains compound tax-free.
Bottom line
OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Microsoft can fight over which AI assistant consumers use. Shopify has a different opportunity. If merchants can plug into all of them through the same catalog, payments, and checkout infrastructure, Shopify doesn’t need one AI platform to dominate.
It needs AI companies to keep competing for shoppers. For once, the fight may be more useful than the winner.
