Shopify Inc. is sharpening its focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce, positioning both as central to its long-term growth strategy.
In its latest earnings call, company executives described a sweeping effort to make AI the backbone of how merchants sell, operate and scale. And B2B merchants emerged as a key growth driver.
Shopify executives outlined what they called a shift “from search to conversation,” referring to the rise of agentic commerce — where AI assistants manage product discovery, checkout and post-purchase interactions on behalf of buyers.
At the core of that strategy is Shopify’s Commerce for Agents toolkit. It includes what Shopify calls Catalog, Universal Cart and Checkout Kit. These products allow external AI assistants to pull product data, assemble shopping carts and complete transactions inside conversational platforms.
“AI is able to fundamentally change how we shop, moving from search to conversation,” Shopify president Harley Finkelstein told analysts. “If AI is fueled by data, then Shopify has a clear advantage. We power millions of merchants and billions of transactions.”
The company has already integrated its tools with leading AI platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot. Those integrations enable users to make purchases without leaving a chat interface. Finkelstein described this as the beginning of “a seamless and intuitive shopping experience end to end,” with Shopify acting as the transaction layer behind these agents.
Currently, 118 of the Top 2000 online retailers in North America use Shopify as their ecommerce platform, according to Digital Commerce 360 data. In 2024, the combined web sales of all Top 2000 retailers that used Shopify’s ecommerce platform reached $10.496 billion. The Top 2000 Database ranks North America’s largest online retailers based on their annual ecommerce sales and more.
How Shopify is capitalizing on B2B ecommerce
While Shopify’s brand is rooted in retail and entrepreneurship, its B2B segment is expanding rapidly. Gross merchandise volume (GMV) from B2B transactions nearly doubled year-over-year in the third quarter, chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister reported.
Growth was broad-based, with notable strength in Canada — up 155% — and in home and garden products, up about 150%. Shopify did not break out specific numbers.
Hoffmeister said the company’s recent product developments are helping “make incredible headway across B2B, offline and international,” expanding Shopify’s total addressable market.
The results follow two years of triple-digit B2B growth as more manufacturers, wholesalers and large-scale retailers adopt the platform to manage quoting, pricing and reordering workflows that historically relied on custom ERP systems.
On the merchant-operations side, Shopify’s Sidekick assistant is emerging as a key tool. It designed its on-platform AI system to help merchants analyze performance, segment customers and automate marketing or operational tasks. More than 750,000 stores used Sidekick for the first time in the third quarter, generating 100 million conversations, according to the company.
Finkelstein characterized the shift as one from “automation to autonomy,” with AI now managing complex, multi-step business tasks. Conversations with Sidekick often extend dozens of exchanges, covering everything from analytics to SEO optimization.
For distributors and manufacturers, Shopify’s direction signals a broader transformation in how commerce platforms will enable AI-mediated selling and procurement. Conversational agents could manage routine ordering, reordering and support requests — effectively reducing friction in B2B transactions — while tools like Sidekick could automate backend operations and pricing decisions.
Shopify views its combination of AI infrastructure and B2B growth as an indicator of how enterprise platforms are evolving.
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Sign up for a complimentary subscription to Digital Commerce 360 B2B News. It covers technology and business trends in the growing B2B ecommerce industry. Contact Mark Brohan, senior vice president of B2B and Market Research, at mark@digitalcommerce360.com. Follow him on Twitter @markbrohan. Follow us on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and YouTube.
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