A：During Shopify's second quarter of 2026, the company reported a 32% increase in GMV to $116 billion, with revenue up 34% to $3.6 billion. The free cash margin was 18%, indicating a growth rate of 30% or more across every metric, and marking five consecutive quarters of GMV growth above 30%.

A：Shopify's strategy of forming partnerships with major technology companies like OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Microsoft benefits its merchants by providing access to new and emerging commerce surfaces. These partnerships enable Shopify to offer a diverse range of best-in-class tools to its merchants, all integrated within a unified platform, thus simplifying the complex landscape of commerce for the merchants.

A：In the new era of commerce, the Shopify platform acts as a critical partner by providing a consistent and reliable infrastructure that ensures a seamless shopping experience, regardless of how or where commerce is conducted. It supports merchants from their initial scale to full scale by leveraging its partner ecosystem, and it is being extended to new commerce surfaces to democratize code and software development and lower barriers to starting a business.

A：The Shopify catalog, envisioned as the authoritative source of truth for AI product discovery, is enhancing the merchant experience by structuring product data to enable AI partners to access it directly. This allows for the discovery, understanding, and recommendation of merchants' products. Over a billion products and 20 years of commerce experience have been invested in to ensure that AI searches, powered by the catalog, convert at double the rate of those using scraped data.

A：The Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) is a unified protocol introduced by Shopify that industry players across the commerce stack are converging upon. It allows partners and developers to create commerce experiences with consistent infrastructure, including access to product data, carts, and checkouts, while preserving logic and fulfillment rules. UCP also ensures that products are automatically listed in the Shopify catalog and that builders can access the catalog API across millions of merchants, thus enabling the construction of commerce experiences that align with the diversity of commerce.

A：AI-driven traffic and orders are contributing to Shopify's GMV by tripling year over year growth in AI-driven traffic and orders to Shopify stores. New buyer orders from AI channels have nearly doubled compared to other channels in the second quarter, and AI remains one of the largest sources of buyer traffic, with traditional search sessions up 1.3x over the past two years, accounting for roughly a third of all storefront sessions.

A：Sidekick is significantly aiding merchants by handling millions of conversations and facilitating the creation of custom apps. Daily active merchants using Sidekick increased 3.6x year over year, and daily sessions grew 4.8x. As a result, new merchants reach their first sale faster, and established merchants operate more efficiently. Sidekick's guidance during onboarding led to an 8% increase in merchants reaching five orders within 15 days. As merchants grow, the use of Sidekick evolves, with a focus shifting from store setup to analytics and reporting for established merchants.

A：Structural changes in the market that are strengthening Shopify's position include the type of merchants benefiting from AI shifts, particularly smaller brands that form the long tail of commerce. These smaller, specialized brands, which make up the majority of Shopify's merchant base, have seen disproportionate benefits from AI search. This is evident from the fact that 75% of AI attributed orders in the second quarter came from outside the top 100 categories, thus solidifying Shopify's position in supporting these smaller brands.

A：AI agents enhance product matching by understanding the buyer's specific intent and considering multiple constraints such as dimensions, vehicle type, and number of items needed, unlike traditional search which focuses only on the keywords.

A：Specific AI search benefits merchants and buyers by ensuring relevancy and personalization. Products that are made for specific buyers perform particularly well, which leads to better conversion rates for the merchants.

A：AI search results have a positive impact on conversion and the shopping journey by compressing buyers' journeys, with half of all AI referred sessions landing directly on product description pages. This results in a more efficient and direct path to purchase.

A：Trust and identity are crucial in commerce to ensure that buyers feel confident in transactions, especially when agents act on their behalf. Shopify facilitates this by building a buyer network with hundreds of millions of people, handling identity preferences and payments统一 as a system.

A：The Shop app's native GMV grew over 70% in Q2, with Shop Pay representing a significant portion of the shop app GMV. Shop Pay acts as a trusted payment layer, indicating the importance of trust and identity in conversion and supporting the overall growth.

A：Growth highlights in Q2 include international GMV growing 37%, launching a local payment method in Mexico, expanding managed markets to Canada and the UK, and offline Shopify point of sale GMV growing 32% year over year.

A：Shopify is proud of its high merchant retention rate and its ability to support brands at any stage of their lifecycle, with each additional channel embedding merchants more deeply in the platform and driving profitable growth.

A：Shopify supports the entire spectrum of commerce businesses by leveraging an ecosystem of partners to build with them, maintaining a focus on absorbing complexity for merchants, and adapting to the changing needs of the merchant base while staying true to its core objectives.

A：As commerce becomes more complex, the value of Shopify's platform increases. The platform helps entrepreneurs start their businesses quickly and easily, and with AI tools, it continues to facilitate rapid growth and new experiences.

A：Regardless of the commerce channel, merchants require products to be discoverable, inventory to be accurate, a seamless checkout experience, and reliable payment processing. Shopify provides the infrastructure to meet these needs.

A：In Q2, Shopify achieved greater than 30% growth in GMB revenue, gross profit, operating income, and free cash flow. It marked the fifth consecutive quarter with constant currency GMB growth between 29% and 30%. The continued success is driven by strong cohort performance and the growth of older cohorts.

A：Shopify's approach to merchant growth and retention involves offering a wide range of products and an integrated platform to simplify commerce, creating a cohort strategy that supports both new and existing merchants, and enabling those who scale to do so successfully.

A：Shopify's platform integrates various commerce functions such as GMB, payments, capital, checkout, Fuel, buyer identity, advertising precision, and transaction data to inform and enhance each other, creating a comprehensive solution for merchants.

A：The main contributors to the revenue growth in Q2 were merchant solutions revenue growth of 37%, which was driven by strength in GMV and increased payments penetration; shop pay GMV growth of 53%; and subscription solutions revenue growth of 22%.

A：Revenue grew 34% or 33% on a constant currency basis in Q2.

A：Shop pay GMV grew 53% year over year and by making more local payment methods available within shop pay, it continued the two-prong strategy of adding local payment methods to Shopify payments and shop pay. This choice and availability of payment methods help eliminate reasons for buyers to abandon their checkout and drive shop pay use.

A：The growth in subscription solutions revenue was driven by monthly subscriptions for standard plans, plus subscriptions, and variable platform fees, all of which experienced strong growth, leading to a 19% year-over-year growth in Q2 MRR.

A：The Q3 outlook expects revenue growth in the low 30s year over year, driven by broad-based across geographies, merchandise, and channels. There is no expected significant foreign exchange impact.

A：Gross profit dollars are expected to grow in the mid to high 20s, and operating expenses are expected to be 33% to 34% of revenue in Q3.

A：Shopify plans to monetize the value created by AI by unlocking more places for merchants to sell and earning on those sales with the same economics as online store transactions. AI attributed purchases have been flowing through merchants' accounts with no new fees or separate pricing.

A：The new surface area represents a structural advantage for small specialized independent businesses, with 75% of AI attributed purchases in Q2 being from outside the top 100 categories. This indicates that merchants on Shopify will disproportionately benefit from the new surface area as they grow, and Shopify will grow with them.

A：The migration path of brands to Shopify typically starts with moving to a single-channel online store, which then evolves into a unified commerce platform with Shopify over time. This transition includes moving beyond e-commerce to points of sale, B2B, and other commerce-related functions.

A：Large enterprise brands consider Shopify as their best option because the platform offers a unified commerce solution that allows for a more efficient and streamlined approach to managing their commerce operations. Shopify's team and sales function are geared towards quickly getting large merchants up and running on the platform, which benefits from Shopify's extensive experience and ability to support a wide range of brands.

A：Shopify's approach to onboarding new merchants includes starting with a basic but important role for the merchant, such as using Shop Pay, and then as the merchant grows, Shopify can be integrated into more of their operations. This allows Shopify to become increasingly important to the merchant as they scale. Examples include established retailers and even large enterprise brands starting with a small team that can manage billions in GMV.

A：The potential for growth internationally is substantial for Shopify, as they have captured less than 1% of global retail sales. There is significant opportunity in core geographies where they operate, and international growth is a focus area for the company.

A：The Shopify catalog is a primary driver of demand generation, with a conversion rate that is double that of general search conversions. The catalog's importance to consumers is underpinned by high-fidelity product data, and includes attributes like suitability for formal events or breathability for fabrics. This detailed catalog drives traffic, with year-on-year increases in both traffic and orders, and it is a significant factor in encouraging new buyers to order through AI channels on Shopify.

A：The 'builder economy' around Shopify signifies the growth in entrepreneurship and the shift towards individuals taking control of their businesses. This is reflected in the growing popularity of Shopify as a platform that supports these entrepreneurs, with tools like Sidekick that assist with reaching early milestones, making smarter decisions, and simplifying operational tasks. This contributes to the overall growth and success of Shopify as a platform for small business owners.

A：Merchants using Sidekick have increased daily active sessions 4.8x year over year and had nearly 34 million conversations with Psychic in Q2, up from 12,000 in Q1. Additionally, they built 36,000 custom apps in Q2, up from 12,000 in Q1.

A：Merchants are using Sidekick to push into advanced design, content, SEO, and even product creation, taking advantage of its enhanced capabilities within the flow of running their businesses and leveraging the context it has across all of Shopify.

A：As a business grows, Sidekick's role expands as well. In the first 30 days, 50% of conversations are about store setup, but after five years, setup accounts for only 8% because the merchant is already at scale. Over time, analytics and reporting become more important, making up over 40% of the use, as Sidekick helps the merchant understand the business and spot new opportunities.

A：AI is now integrated into every decision, experiment, and merchant interaction at Shopify, helping the company to get smarter. AI advancements are enabling improvements and operational capabilities. Shopify uses the best model for each job, including frontier intelligence where it matters and less expensive models when not needed, all running through an internal proxy for visibility, control, and security. Shopify has also created distilled models for efficiency.

A：The key components of Shopify's composable architecture include allowing merchants to use headless commerce and various tools to build complex commerce experiences. The underlying system is Shopify, which acts as the commerce retail operating system, handling inventory, transactions, customer data, analytics, taxes, and shipping. This allows merchants to use a variety of third-party tools while maintaining control and a centralized back office.

A：Shopify's strategy for partnerships is to collaborate with companies that help merchants succeed, which has been a key part of its success. The company has a history of finding incredible collaboration with partners and aims to integrate their strengths into its platform while maintaining the centralization of commerce operations.

A：Evidence of AI's impact includes a 3x increase in traffic and orders, 2x more new buyers from AI channels compared to other channels, and a 2x higher conversion rate from the catalog for AI search. Additionally, AI is attributed to 75% of purchases in Q2 from outside the top 100 categories, helping small, specialized, independent businesses gain visibility and succeed on the platform.

A：The Shop app is contributing to commerce by becoming a daily destination for buyers with high intent discovery and by facilitating a seamless shopping experience with cartsync representing 30% of Shop app GMV. It is showing significant growth and is considered one of the major legs of Shopify's future strategy.

A：Shopify's durable operational model, characterized by a world-class team and a strong foundation, contributes to its success by powering the flywheel of products and services that help merchants succeed. This leads to more transactions, providing the company with more data to enhance its AI capabilities, creating a cycle of smarter products and wider merchant adoption.