Shopify shares jumped about 17% after the company reported that AI-referred traffic to its merchants' storefronts tripled year over year in the second quarter, along with tripled AI-sourced orders. The report undercuts the year-long worry that AI shopping agents would cut Shopify's storefronts out of the transaction, even as the underlying business kept compounding at scale.
Shopify's shares jumped about 17% to roughly $144 after the company's second-quarter report on Wednesday. The company said AI-referred traffic to its merchants' storefronts tripled year over year. Orders that began with an AI search tripled as well. New buyers arriving through AI channels placed orders at nearly twice the rate of other channels.
AI shoppers convert better
Half of AI-referred sessions land directly on a product page, 2.5 times the rate of traditional search, meaning these shoppers arrive closer to a purchase. Meanwhile, 75% of AI-attributed purchases came from outside the top 100 product categories, a sign the traffic reaches niche merchants rather than just the biggest brands. Separately, Crypto Briefing reported that AI-referred sessions convert at rates nearly 50% higher than organic search, with orders carrying average values 14% greater.
Shopify's own tools reinforce the channel: catalog-powered AI search converts at twice the rate of AI search built on scraped data, the company said. Daily active merchants using Sidekick, its AI assistant, grew 3.6 times year over year. Traditional search hasn't shrunk either — sessions have grown 1.3 times over the past two years and still account for about a third of storefront sessions, president Harley Finkelstein said.
The core business keeps compounding
Revenue rose 34% year over year to $3.6 billion, matching the first quarter's pace. Gross merchandise volume reached $115.6 billion, up 32% year over year and up from $100.7 billion the prior quarter. Operating income climbed 68% to $488 million. Free cash flow reached $654 million, with the margin expanding to 18% from 15% in the first quarter.
Shopify's president called it a standout period: "This was a monster quarter," he said in the earnings release. Crypto Briefing added that the company's product catalog now spans more than a billion items structured to interface with AI platforms including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, and Grok. Separately, Shop Pay has crossed $400 billion in lifetime accelerated GMV.
What Shopify didn't disclose
Shopify gave growth rates but no dollar figure for AI-referred GMV and no share of the $115.6 billion total, leaving the size of the channel unclear. Still, Shopify guided third-quarter revenue to grow at a low-thirties percentage rate year over year. Monthly recurring revenue reached $221 million, up from $212 million the previous quarter.
Shares now trade at about 70 times forward earnings after the jump, a multiple that assumes the growth keeps coming.
Sources: The Motley Fool, Crypto Briefing
Trading involves risk.
Risk Disclaimer
