Here’s what investors should know. <\/p>\n
Shopify provides a turnkey solution for omnichannel commerce. Its software platform lets merchants manage their businesses across physical and digital storefronts, including social media, online marketplaces, and custom websites. Shopify also provides adjacent merchant solutions for payments, marketing, logistics, and artificial intelligence<\/a> (AI). <\/p>\n Shopify’s gross merchandise volume (GMV) increased 35% in the first quarter as investments beyond its core retail e-commerce offering continued to pay off. In particular, wholesale (business-to-business) GMV rose 80% and international GMV increased 45%. In turn, total revenue rose 31% to $3.1 billion and non-GAAP<\/a> net income climbed 44% to $0.36 per diluted share. <\/p>\n Shopify is the market leader in e-commerce software and its merchants account for nearly 15% of U.S. e-commerce sales, which makes it the second largest company in the industry behind Amazon. Shopify is well positioned to gain market share in the agentic commerce era. Agentic commerce is a new technology where AI agents shop for consumers, handling everything from product research and comparisons to purchases. <\/p>\n Shopify co-developed the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) with Alphabet’s Google, an open standard that allows commerce platform to syndicate merchant product catalog across agentic surfaces. Shopify is the only platform that enables product discovery and selling inside OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Google’s Gemini, according to President Harley Finkelstein. <\/p>\n Shopify is already benefiting from investments in agentic commerce. In the first quarter, AI-driven traffic to merchant storefronts climbed 8x, and orders from AI-powered searches increased 13x. “Early signals on AI channels are really compelling,” Finkelstein told analysts. That bodes well for the future. Grand View Research estimates that agentic commerce sales will increase at 36% annually through 2033. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Shopify employees are also leaning on AI to improve productivity. AI tools now handle over 50% of coding and management expects that figure to increase. By automating that work, Shopify was able to ship more than 300 new products last year while keeping its headcount flat. Those internal efficiencies should drive greater profitability over time. <\/p>\n Shopify stock is expensive but still worth consideration <\/p>\n Wall Street expects Shopify’s adjusted earnings to increase at 31% annually through 2028. In that context, the current valuation of 74 times earnings looks relatively expensive. Yet, Keith Weiss at Morgan Stanley believes his bull-case scenario will materialize if sales growth accelerates on stronger-than-anticipated adoption of merchant solutions like Shopify Payments and Shopify Audiences (machine learning marketing software). <\/p>\n I doubt revenue growth will accelerate enough for the stock to hit $287 per share any time soon; the valuation is simply too rich. However, Wall Street’s median target price values Shopify at $150 per share. That is more reasonable, though the company will probably still need to beat estimates and deliver encouraging guidance to reach that price. <\/p>\n Here’s the bottom line: Shopify is well positioned to take market share in e-commerce as the agentic AI era unfolds. Yes, the stock is expensive, but it’s also down 36% from its high. I think that creates a reasonable entry point for patient investors with a time horizon of at least five years. But I would start with a very small position and add shares if the stock continues to fall. <\/p>\n Should you buy stock in Shopify right now? <\/p>\n Before you buy stock in Shopify, consider this: <\/p>\n The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the\u00a010 best stocks<\/a> for investors to buy now\u2026 and Shopify wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. <\/p>\n Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation,\u00a0you’d have $377,990!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,269,518!* <\/p>\n Now, it’s worth noting\u00a0Stock Advisor’s total average return is 896% \u2014 a market-crushing outperformance compared to 206% for the S&P 500.\u00a0Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with\u00a0Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. <\/p>\n See the 10 stocks \u00bb<\/a> <\/p>\n *Stock Advisor returns as of July 28, 2026. <\/p>\n Trevor Jennewine<\/a> has positions in Amazon and Shopify. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Micron Technology, Microsoft, and Shopify. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/a> Image source: Getty Images. Shopify is leaning into agentic commerce <\/p>\n