The news: Shopify expects agentic commerce to boost adoption of online shopping and drive growth for its merchants as more consumers turn to AI tools for research and discovery.

Zoom in: Shopify justified its stance by noting that merchants that have made their products discoverable on AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot are attracting buyers on those channels that “they may not otherwise have seen,” president Harley Finkelstein said on the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call. As a result, Shopify expects agentic commerce tools to “pull more consumers into [ecommerce] who may have been laggards,” as well as encourage those customers to shop online more regularly.

While agentic commerce adoption is in its early stages, Shopify pointed to encouraging momentum.

• AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores was eight times higher YoY in Q1, while orders from AI-powered searches were up 13-fold.
• New buyer orders occurred at nearly twice the rate of other channels, showing AI platforms’ effectiveness at driving customer acquisition.

Shopify’s success is partly due to two structural advantages. It is the sole platform that allows for discovery and sales within ChatGPT, Copilot, and Google from a single system of record, giving merchants more opportunities to reach potential buyers. It is also working to structure product listings to ensure that AI tools deliver accurate, real-time information to users, with over 1 billion listings updated so far.

Implications for retail: While agentic commerce faces significant hurdles—including trust barriers and security and reliability concerns—there is considerable runway for growth. If AI platforms can address those challenges and reassure consumers, full adoption of end-to-end agentic commerce would begin lifting US ecommerce sales past our baseline expectations starting in 2027. By 2030, US ecommerce sales would be 11.5% higher than our current base case, reaching nearly $2 trillion.