待翻译：Shopify shares soar as AI efforts begin to pay off

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Olivia Grandy Published Yesterday Shopify Inc.’s SHOP-T share price jumped 16 per cent Wednesday after the company reported strong second-quarter revenue and profit growth that beat analysts’ estimates, driven by the development of AI tools that are attracting more merchants to use its services. The Ottawa-based e-commerce giant has seen growth from agentic commerce, which is the use of autonomous AI agents to search for and buy products online. Shopify has been building AI tools to help make it easier for shoppers to find online retailers, pushing up the total value of goods sold on its platform. “We have a very strong conviction that commerce experiences will soon be built in to everywhere people are spending their time,” Shopify president Harley Finkelstein told analysts during a call to discuss the quarterly earnings. The stronger-than-expected results likely alleviated some investor fears around growing competition for Shopify, after the company’s stock price underperformed in recent months, Citi analyst Tyler Radke wrote in a research note. “The results appear to be driven by balanced growth across North America and Europe, and we suspect accelerated share gains among larger merchants,” he said. Shopify’s shares closed at $201.97 Wednesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The company, which reports in U.S. dollars, said its second-quarter revenue rose to US$3.6-billion, up nearly 34 per cent compared with the same period last year. That exceeded analysts’ expectations of US$3.4-billion, according to average estimates compiled by S&P Capital IQ. Net income climbed to US$1.5-billion, or US$1.16 a share, up from US$906-million or 70 US cents a share in the same period in 2025. More merchants are now making use of Shopify’s AI tools – such as its Sidekick assistant, which can help with store set-up and design, and later, provide analytics. However, greater use of these tools had been increasing the company’s AI costs, Shopify noted in its previous earnings call, in May. More recently, the company has been rebalancing its innovation with greater cost control, executives said on Wednesday’s call. “The way we think about these models is, we use the best model for the job. We use frontier intelligence where it matters; we use less-expensive models where it’s simply not needed,” Mr. Finkelstein said. Shopify has also partnered with companies such as OpenAI, Google and Microsoft Corp. to offer its products through user conversations with chatbots or searches, boosting its merchants’ sales. With AI costs rising, companies are hiring experts to answer a crucial question: Is it worth it? The company reported a 32-per-cent increase in gross merchandise volume, which is the value of transactions made over Shopify’s platform. Catalog, one AI tool the company has built, enhances merchants’ product data to provide more specific information when consumers are searching for things to buy, Mr. Finkelstein said. He gave the example of looking for a screenless phone for his 10-year-old daughter. “Five years ago, I would have done that in [online] search, and I probably would have received some big-box retailer selling a bunch of different random products,” he said. Instead, he was directed to a product called Tin Can, which is a landline-style phone that uses WiFi to make calls, and is specifically designed to introduce children to talking on the phone. The company is also a client of Shopify’s. Shopify’s “magic sauce,” Mr. Finkelstein added, is offering a variety of products that merchants can use depending on their needs – from small e-commerce sites just beginning to build their presence, to much larger and more complex businesses that require in-depth analytics tools. “We want to make sure that anyone who’s starting a business at their mom’s kitchen table uses Shopify. We know not all will succeed,” he said, “but what we’ve seen over 20 years, [is that] the ones that do, stay with us indefinitely.” Report an editorial error Report a technical issue Editorial code of conduct Authors and topics you follow will be added to your personal news feed in Following. Interact with The Globe