Harley Finkelstein, the President of Shopify, spoke at a recent event and spoke about how Shopify is planning to use AI agents. The company is using AI to help both customers and merchants, and Shopify’s embrace of AI agents may have a massive impact on the ecommerce industry as a whole.
Shopify President Says Company is Preparing for AI Agents
Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein, recently spoke about how the company is preparing for agentic shopping. Specifically, he mentioned that the company is going to use agentic applications as a kind of personal shopper. These agentic personal shoppers may be the future of shopping online, as they can make discovering, comparing, and buying items more efficient.
In addition to stating that the rollout of these agents will be slow, he said the agents will bring context to shopping, which traditional search engines normally struggle with. He mentions that agentic is fundamentally merit-based, and once it learns people’s preferences, it’ll do a better job of providing specific and tailored options that represent what a person likes.
While focusing on the customer experience is a big part of Shopify’s push into agentic shopping, Finkelstein also mentioned that many merchants on the platform are struggling to get their products discovered. He believes that agentic may help with this, and could play a major role in surfacing new brands to customers, as well.
Both Customers and Merchants Use AI Agents
As you can see, both Shopify merchants and ecommerce shoppers can benefit from AI. For merchants, Finkelstein also mentioned that the company is building an AI assistant for merchants called Sidekick, which was covered in more detail in the company’s Winter 2026 Edition.
He also added that Shopify is building agents to handle support problems and a protocol that will allow agents to better understand various types of merchant data. While Shopify is just getting its feet wet when it comes to agentic shopping and AI agents in general, they’ve already become quite popular.
In fact, the transition to agentic enterprise is already underway, as organizations currently use an average of 12 AI agents. This number is also expected to rise by 67% within the next two years, and many companies report that all or most of their teams already use AI agents in some way.
On the customer side of things, consumers will use AI agents to perform research for them, discover new and exciting products that they may never have found otherwise, and even have agents complete full purchases for them in some cases.
The Importance of Shopify Embracing AI Shopping Agents
Shopify embracing AI shopping agents could represent a major shift in the ecommerce industry, as Shopify is one of the largest players in the space. While many companies, merchants, customers, and platforms use AI agents, Shopify going all in could bring even more participants into the industry.
Also, Shopify is not just embracing agentic shopping, but is very excited about it. In fact, Finkelstein said that Shopify is probably more excited about this new era of ecommerce than it ever has been before, due to the opportunity it creates, both for large and small merchants.
While it remains to be seen how quickly the transition occurs for Shopify, there’s little doubt that the company plans to go all-in on agentic shopping at some point in the future. When it does, I wouldn’t be surprised to see other platforms and companies ramp up their usage and support of AI agents.
