Shopify merchants will soon be able to sell directly through conversations with artificial intelligence models, directly within the chat interface, Canada’s largest fintech firm announced this week.
Partnering with OpenAI alongside Etsy and Stripe, Shopify powers product discovery with real-time data like pricing, inventory, images, and variants, making hundreds of millions of products instantly discoverable in a format that AI understands.
“Shopping is changing fast; People are discovering products in AI conversations, not just through search or ads,” explains Vanessa Lee, who serves as vice president of product at Shopify.
The new integration with ChatGPT “will let our merchants show up naturally in those moments and give shoppers a way to buy without breaking their flow,” according to Lee.
“It’s a really exciting shift for commerce,” she said.
Big brands are banking that ““AI will fundamentally reshape how our customers shop,” according to Colleen Waters, who functions as vice president of e-commerce at Steve Madden.
The Shopify collaboration with OpenAI “means we can automatically be wherever our customers are shopping, including inside AI conversations—that lets us stay focused on our brand and customers while staying at the forefront of commerce.”
For merchants, store names are displayed so shoppers know who they’re buying from, while orders “flow into the Shopify admin with proper attribution and transparent fees,” according to a blog post from the Ottawa firm.
“Our goal is always to keep merchants on the cutting edge by default,” Lee remarked. “We’re focused on building tools that help merchants grow, no matter their size or experience.”
As Shopify’s AI integration expands, “merchants will unlock new ways to sell automatically, with their brand and shopper relationships still front and centre.”
This so-called “agentic commerce in action” enables transactions directly within AI conversations “without replacing what already works,” according to a statement from Shopify.
“We’re making sure our merchants thrive in the era of agentic commerce,” said Lee. “We’re helping everyone from indie brands to household names reach shoppers in entirely new ways.”
Currently valued at more than $200B, Shopify is the second largest public company in Canada by market cap behind only the venerable Royal Bank of Canada.
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