Shopify said orders reaching its merchants through AI channels were up 3.3x year on year in the third quarter, and AI-referred traffic was up 2.6x. Merchants sold $119.1 billion through Shopify in the three months to 30th September, up 29.5%. Revenue rose 32% to $3.7 billion.
Shopify hasn’t said how many orders that is, or what share of GMV comes through AI channels. Shopify president Harley Finkelstein said on the earnings call that volume is still small.
Shopify said AI channels sent shoppers straight to product pages at three times the rate of organic search, and those shoppers converted 64% more often.
Searches run through Shopify Catalog, the company’s structured product dataset, converted at twice the rate of general AI search.
Shopify said 74% of AI-attributed purchases came from categories outside its top 100. Finkelstein said AI channels reward specificity, which suits the niche and long-tail products that make up most of Shopify’s merchant base.
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Shopify CFO Jeff Hoffmeister said a sale that starts with an AI agent carries the same economics as any other discovery channel, with no new fee.
On the call, Shopify named the personal shopping agents Muse, Instinct, Claude Duet and Grokbot as partners. Merchant checkouts are supported, and buyers can use Shop Pay as their wallet.
Shopify switched on Agentic Storefronts by default for US merchants in March. The feature puts product catalogues into ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode and Gemini.
The growth rate is similar to Q2, when Shopify reported that AI-driven traffic and orders had both tripled year on year.
Europe was Shopify’s fastest-growing region, with GMV up 33% in constant currency. North America grew 28% on the same basis, its third straight quarter at that rate, and international GMV rose 32%.
Shopify said the local payment options it has been adding across several European markets helped drive that growth.
Europe has grown faster than North America for Shopify in every quarter this year. In Q1, Finkelstein reported Europe up 42% against 33% in North America.
Shopify expects revenue growth in the low 30s for Q4, and plans to spend more on marketing ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Shopify shares fell on results day as investors reacted to the spending plans.
