Shopify Q4 Earnings: GMV Up 31% YoY, AI Shopping Set for Major Breakthrough in 2026

Ebrun Exclusive: Shopify released its Q4 2025 earnings report, showing quarterly revenue of approximately $3.67 billion, a 31% year-over-year increase. Full-year revenue reached about $11.56 billion, up 30% YoY. Gross merchandise volume (GMV) also maintained strong growth.

In Q4, Shopify's GMV hit $123.8 billion, a 31% increase. Nearly half of Shopify's GMV growth came from regions outside North America, with Europe being a standout performer—Q4 GMV surged 45% YoY, or 35% on a constant currency basis.

Over the past year, AI shopping has been a key focus for Shopify, which is determined to become the new infrastructure for the AI e-commerce era.

Shopify has partnered with AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot, and co-developed the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) with Google to establish an end-to-end transaction pathway between AI agents and e-commerce systems. This protocol enables AI to handle product discovery, on-site checkout, and post-order operations without merchants needing to rebuild systems for different AI platforms.

Shopify possesses structured transaction data from millions of merchants and billions of products, providing highly relevant results for AI agents. The company has already integrated its merchant catalog into multiple leading AI platforms, making billions of structured product data points directly accessible to AI. Management noted that several major brands have begun selling via Shopify on AI platforms.

Unlike traditional advertising logic, AI-driven discovery is based on relevance. This is particularly important for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), which historically struggled with visibility but now have opportunities for precise recommendations through AI matching.

Management disclosed that since January 2025, orders driven by AI searches to Shopify stores have increased 15-fold.

"In the new AI shopping ecosystem, large language models will not bypass Shopify for checkout; complex processes like logistics, payments, and analytics will continue to revolve around Shopify."

Shopify management stated that 2026 will be the year of large-scale AI shopping adoption, and Shopify's role is evolving. Over the past decade, Shopify has been a platform providing SMBs with store-building and transaction capabilities. Now, it is becoming the architect of commercial infrastructure and rules in the AI era. As management emphasized during the earnings call: "In the next decade, we will see the birth of more billion-dollar brands than in the entire last century."