Shopify is becoming a leader in the ultra-competitive e-commerce space. The company’s agentic AI push, including a collaboration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT announced in September, could boost the stock further. Shopify is up about 50% year to date and reached an all-time high in October. The company also grew its revenue by 32% in the third quarter from the year-earlier period. The third quarter also marked the company’s ninth straight trimester with double-digit free cash flow margins. Shopify’s platform is used by millions of merchants as well as big brands such as Supreme, Glossier, Vuori and Mattel. The collaboration between OpenAI and Shopify allows its merchants to sell directly in ChatGPT. The partnership also allows shoppers to complete transactions without ever having to leave the chatbot. Users can choose to complete their purchase with Instant Checkout in ChatGPT or use Shop Pay, Shopify’s accelerated checkout solution. While analysts think it is too soon to know the impact of AI integration on Shopify, they are optimistic about the boost these strides will give to the stock. It all just depends on how quickly OpenAI and Shopify can scale. “They’re clearly early on their S curve, where they’re just packing a bunch of product together that continues to make the service more relevant and better,” Citizens analyst Andrew Boone told CNBC about Shopify. SHOP YTD mountain SHOP in 2025 Other companies including Etsy and Walmart announced collaborations with Open AI in September and October of this year, respectively. Etsy stock rose 16% after the announcement, though the stock has been volatile since. Shopify, on the other hand, has continued to grow. Analysts are hopeful in the future of agentic e-commerce, but OpenAI referral traffic for platforms like Shopify is still in the low-single digits, according to Boone. “That’s kind of a best case scenario today just because usage has yet to scale,” he said. An early adopter Shopify was early to the AI race in the e-commerce space, Morgan Stanley analysts said in late October. “Whether AI-driven purchasing, autonomous storefronts, or agent-mediated checkout, Shopify is consistently the first call for innovators, pairing trustworthy scale with rapid innovation,” analyst Keith Weiss wrote. “In agentic commerce, we believe winners will be platforms that can move fast, integrate securely, and serve a diverse set of merchants, key attributes underscoring Shopify’s demonstrated competitive moat.” The company has slowly rolled out AI features to merchants on its platform starting in 2023 with Shopify Magic, the platform’s chatbot. In 2025, Shopify released its AI store builder, allowing merchants to create a website based on keyword descriptions. “Shopify, for its millions of merchants, organized all their information and now OpenAI can have ChatGPT talk to that dialog in order to help their consumers shop online at millions of merchants,” D.A. Davidson’s head of technology research Gil Luria said. Luria stressed the importance of AI-facing websites alongside the preexisting human-facing platform. “What Open AI and what Shopify did was they anticipated this, and so they went to their millions of merchants and started rebuilding all their stores to be able to work with a chat, to be able to work with a machine instead of just with a human,” Luria said. “So their customers, their merchants, still have a human-facing website, but they now also have a chat facing website.” Consumers using AI to shop Even before Shopify and OpenAI announced the joint effort, ChatGPT users were already consulting the chatbot to make decisions on their purchases. When Marie Tuason, a health and wellness coach, was in search of healthy protein bars this past February, she turned to ChatGPT for help. Tuason rarely makes purchases online, preferring to shop locally. But when she has specific needs that the local market is unable to fulfill, Tuason looks to large language models to find exactly what she is looking for. “I’ve been using LLMs for a few years now,” Tuason said. “I rarely use Google.” After she asked ChatGPT for protein bars that met her individual health goals, the chatbot recommended products from IQ Bar, a Shopify merchant and a company new to Tuason at the time. Soon, a box of IQ Bars arrived at her door. Tuason is not alone. Shoppers across the globe are looking to ChatGPT for advice. A September study by the National Bureau of Economic Research on ChatGPT consumer behavior found that nearly a quarter of all non-work inquiries in the past year were related to “seeking information,” including making shopping decisions. According to head of ChatGPT Nick Turley, the large language model sees over 800 million unique users a week. Although Tuason uses ChatGPT regularly, she also remains skeptical: “Even if you have this GPT, you have to still see if they’re third party tested, if the ingredients are actually correct.” Boone also acknowledged ChatGPT is unable to guarantee accurate results every time. “Now the challenge is, if you’re using ChatGPT, is the chat always going to get it right? We don’t know. We’ll see how this all works out,” Boone said. “We’re not really using it quite that much yet, but there shouldn’t be a problem, because the chat will help you find where the meal is that you want, and then either it’ll check you out automatically, or you’ll just be able to go to the human website and check out yourself.” The aspiration for analysts is that AI integration becomes smoother over time. In the meantime, ChatGPT at least helps users filter through various products. “Chat will at least help them narrow it down to the place where they want to go, and in a perfect world, they’ll just check out for them and they can remain inside the chat for the interaction,” Luria said. Where does the stock go from here? Since the OpenAI and Shopify collaboration is still novel, analysts are waiting to see how consumers respond and implementation solidifies. However, they still expect strong gains for the stock. Morgan Stanley has an overweight rating on Shopify and a price target of $165 with the stock “demonstrating a dominant market position with Shopify now powering > 12% of US eCommerce,” Weiss wrote. Citizens’ Boone has a market outperform rating for Shopify and reiterated a price target of $185. That implies upside of 16% from Friday’s close. “They continue to add more partners, which means their ecosystem is just healthier,” Boone said of Shopify. Luria last month raised Shopify’s price target to $195, signaling more than 20% upside, and reiterated a buy rating. “I think the relationship with OpenAI definitely has increased the value of Shopify, as far as investors are concerned, because it gives them a path to adapt to how the internet is changing on behalf of their merchants,” Luria said.
Shopify has been on a tear in 2025. Can AI give the e-commerce stock another boost?
