How Shopify is bringing agentic AI to enterprise commerce

Shopify optimizes core enterprise commerce workflows with agent AI, automating processes while expanding sales channels.

Adoption of generative AI in commerce has largely focused on chatbots for customer support and organic content creation. Shopify’s Winter 26 release, titled Renaissance, pushes this technology toward agentic commerce where AI systems effectively manage workflow, infrastructure configuration, and product distribution in third-party ecosystems.

Modernize commerce through a proxy AI storefront

The most distinctive architectural modification is the introduction of “proxy storefronts”. Traditionally, merchants route traffic to a private domain to secure conversion. Shopify’s new model allows products to appear directly within AI-driven conversations on platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot.

For CDOs, segmenting the customer journey requires a change in channel strategy. Instead of complex integrations to each external platform, products configured in the admin become discoverable by these agents instantly. The transaction takes place within the conversation, with the attribution data flowing back to the central administrator. This capability addresses the risk of brand concealment as search behavior shifts toward LLM degree holders.

“AI is now essential to modern commerce,” says Dean Evans, managing director of EMEA at Shopify.

Evans points to internal data that suggests 93% of UK merchants are investing in AI tools to aid discovery, which is in line with 66% of consumers who expect to use AI for at least one part of their holiday shopping.

Operational intelligence and “Sidekick” updates.

While distributed commerce addresses revenue generation, updates to “Sidekick” (Shopify’s AI assistant) target operational expenses and efficiency. The tool has evolved from a reactive AI chatbot to a proactive agent system capable of executing complex administrative tasks of a trade.

Sidekick Pulse now displays personalized tasks based on real-time data, such as suggesting product bundles when certain shopping cart behaviors are detected or flagging compliance gaps like missing return policies.

For technical teams, reducing the size of low-level tickets is a key benefit. Sidekick can now build administrative applications through natural language prompts, allowing non-technical employees to build custom tools without developer intervention. Furthermore, it creates “workflow” automations from descriptions to bypass the need for deep knowledge of Shopify’s logical syntax.

To support standardization across large teams, claims can now be saved and shared as “skills,” ensuring that verified and secure claim structures can be reused instead of ad hoc queries.

A persistent difficulty for retail businesses is testing changes without disrupting direct revenue streams. Shopify introduced “SimGym” (currently in search preview) and “Rollouts” to address this issue.

SimGym uses AI shopper agents with human-like profiles to simulate traffic and purchasing behavior. This allows merchants to model how storefront changes impact conversion rates using synthetic data drawn from billions of annual purchases, rather than waiting for live A/B testing results.

To complement this, Rollouts provides native demo capabilities within the admin, allowing for manageable scheduled changes and data-informed decisions regarding buyer behavior. For executives, this reduces risks related to platform updates and marketing experiments.

Infrastructure and developer speed

Beyond agent AI, the update addresses physical commerce infrastructure and developer tools. The new “POS Hub” provides a solution for wired connectivity for retail devices and is designed to improve flexibility in high-volume brick-and-mortar environments. It acts as a dedicated operational unit, integrating card readers and scanners via a stable connection, which is vital for maintaining productivity during peak trading periods.

On the software side, the AI-driven developer platform aims to speed up build times. AI agents can now support applications, perform GraphQL operations, and generate validated code. This is supported by Shopify’s catalog, which enables agents to search across hundreds of millions of products to create richer apps.

Vanessa Lee, VP of Lead Products at Shopify, commented: “We chose the Renaissance theme for this release because it symbolizes progress, momentum, courage and new beginnings… Many of these features wouldn’t have been possible a year ago and they redefine how we achieve our mission of making commerce better for everyone.”

For enterprise leaders, the barriers to creating custom internal tools have been reduced. The storefront is also no longer a fixed destination; It is a distributed collection of data points that can be accessed by third-party AI agents. Preparing product data for the AI-driven future of commerce is now essential to maintaining competitive visibility.

See also: Retailers like Kroger and Lowe’s are testing AI agents without handing control over to Google

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