Shopify's stock is down 30% this year, but AI-driven shopping traffic surged 8× last quarter, suggesting the e-commerce platform may be positioned to benefit as customers increasingly use ChatGPT, Copilot, and Google Gemini to browse and buy.

What happened: Shopify saw an 8× year-over-year increase in AI-driven traffic last quarter. The company is the only online platform allowing users to find and buy products through OpenAI's ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Alphabet's Google Gemini, with these channels driving nearly twice as many orders as other channels. Shopify's AI assistant Sidekick, trained on company and merchant data, saw weekly active shops grow four times over the year-ago quarter.

Why it matters: Shopify's core business—processing payments and managing online stores for merchants—benefits when more traffic flows through its platform. The company captures richer data on customer behavior and purchase patterns, which it can feed back into Sidekick and other merchant tools, potentially widening its competitive advantage. Revenue has already grown at least 30% for four consecutive quarters despite the stock's 30% year-to-date decline, suggesting the market may be undervaluing the AI opportunity.

What to watch: The key risk is whether large AI model makers like OpenAI and Google try to capture a larger share of transaction value themselves. Payments represent a large part of Shopify's merchant services revenue, which accounts for three-quarters of the business. If that revenue stream is threatened, the growth story could stall.