Shoppers and retailers increasingly relying on artificial intelligence helped Shopify Inc. post a US$1.5 billion profit in its latest quarter, pushing its share price up by double-digits.
The e-commerce software giant reported the profit compared with US$906 million a year earlier. The second-quarter result sent Shopify’s share price up nearly 17 per cent to close at $201.97.
President Harley Finkelstein said Shopify is fashioning itself to corner the “new era of commerce” being spurred by more people turning to AI to make and encourage purchases.
“Now, whether commerce is handled by humans or agents, whether stores are built by people or AI, Shopify runs underneath it all,” he told analysts on a call Wednesday.
In his company’s second quarter, the amount of traffic and purchases AI drove to businesses using Shopify software tripled from the year before.
The number of merchants using Sidekick — an AI-powered chatbot Shopify developed to offer advice to boost sales and spruce up shops — on a daily basis was also 3.6 times higher in the second quarter than a year before.
The tool now handles about 34 million conversations a quarter and contributed to the creation of more than 36,000 custom apps — tools developers can create to enhance shops — in the latest quarter, up from 12,000 in the first quarter.
Small businesses, which make up the majority of Shopify customers, have been some of the biggest beneficiaries of the shift toward AI, Finkelstein said.
This is because the technology helps unearth products search engines, which deliver results based on keywords and popularity, wouldn’t often surface and can sometimes offer recommendations that better capture someone’s specific needs.
“When a buyer asks an AI assistant for the best car seat that fits three across a sedan, traditional search focuses on the keyword car seat. An agent, however, understands the actual need, the dimensions, the vehicle type and the fact that they need three,” Finkelstein explained.
“It searches across all of those constraints at once to find the product that actually works, not just the one that ranks highest.”
Finkelstein’s comments came as Shopify, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, said its profit amounted to US$1.16 per diluted share, up from 69 cents US a year prior.
On an adjusted basis, Shopify earned 42 cents US per diluted share, up from 35 cents US per diluted share a year before.
It recorded US$3.58 billion in revenue in the quarter, up from US$2.68 billion in the second quarter of 2025.
Its subscription solutions revenue made up US$802 million of that total, while merchant solutions contributed US$2.78 billion.
Moving forward, the company expects its revenue to grow at a low-thirties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 5, 2026.
Companies in this story: (TSX:SHOP)
