Shopify has revealed that the company is introducing the Agentic Plan, which lets companies sync products to AI chats and let customers check out right in the conversations, even if they don’t have an online store with Shopify. This is the latest of many moves that show that Shopify is all in on agentic commerce.
What is the Shopify Agentic Plan?
According to Shopify, the Agentic Plan is a new plan that lets brands that don’t have a Shopify store sell products directly in AI conversations. It’s the very first time the company is opening up the Shopify Catalog to companies not using Shopify for their online store.
The company says that this new plan is the fastest path to agentic commerce, as you simply need to connect and set up your data once, and then your data will be surfaced everywhere, including ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot, the Shop app, and more.
It also integrates well with your stack, as you can enable checkouts across these surfaces, but still keep your existing system in place. You also maintain full control over how both your brand and products are surfaced in AI chats, and you can use the Knowledge Base to learn what questions customers are asking and provide the proper answers.
The plan essentially connects any brand, even those not using Shopify, to a huge amount of customers right in AI platforms, which is increasingly where more and more product discoveries happen.
While the Agentic Plan isn’t live just yet, interested companies are able to sign up on a waitlist and get updates on when it becomes available.
Shopify’s Expanding Ecommerce Strategy
This Agentic Plan is only the latest expansion that Shopify has made into the world of agentic and AI-powered commerce. The company also recently introduced:
- Shopify Agentic Storefronts to sell products within AI chats.
- Brand Agents to serve as AI-powered shopping assistants for customers on your online store.
- Shopify Sidekick, which is an AI-powered commerce assistant to help companies manage their online stores.
It has also co-developed a new standard for agentic commerce alongside Google, which is called the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). This aims to help AI agents connect with and transact with any merchant.
With all of these agentic commerce-related announcements, it’s clear that Shopify is all in on it being a major part of the ecommerce going forward. While these agentic commerce solutions, protocols, and features are all quite new, I believe they have the potential to revolutionize the online shopping space as we know it.
As a result, your ecommerce brand should be adapting its strategy to account for this new era of commerce. If not, you risk being late to the party and falling behind your competitors who prepared for the shift that many believe agentic commerce will bring.
While your strategy should still ensure that human visitors have a good experience on your site when they visit, you need to make sure it’s optimized for AI traffic, as well. If not, your products or brands may not show up in AI results at all, causing you to miss out on millions of potential customers.
