Online shopping is moving into a new phase, and consumers may not always notice who is powering it.
A shopper today can ask an AI assistant to compare products, find deals, read reviews, build a cart, and move closer to checkout without visiting a traditional retailer’s website.
In some cases, the assistant is still mostly helping the shopper search.
In others, it is beginning to act more like an agent that can move the purchase forward with user approval, payment controls, and other guardrails.
For Shopify, this distinction is becoming crucial as it heads to report its second-quarter 2026 results on August 5, before the market opens.
Shopify, the commerce software company behind millions of online and in-store sellers, helps merchants run stores, manage products, process payments, and sell across different channels.
Now, Bank of America is returning to the stock with a bullish view, arguing that the rise of AI shopping may not weaken Shopify’s role in online commerce.
Bank of America returns to Shopify
Bank of America reinstated coverage of Shopify with a Buy rating and a $150 price target in a July 7 note reviewed by TheStreet.
The firm said that the company could be a “core beneficiary” of the move toward AI-driven, agentic commerce.
BofA analyst Tal Liani said investor concern has centered on whether AI shopping tools could bypass merchant websites and shift discovery and transactions away from Shopify’s platform.
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This worry has been weighing on the stock, which is down around 24% year to date.
BofA’s $150 price target implies nearly 25% upside from the stock’s price of $120 at the time.
In the reinstatement note, Liani argues that investors may be looking at the wrong part of the shopping journey.
If AI assistants become the new front door for product discovery, the value may shift toward the systems that enable transactions.
This includes product catalogs, real-time inventory, pricing, checkout, payments, and fulfillment.
Those are areas where Shopify is already embedded across its merchant base.
BofA’s insight gives investors an early framework for what to watch: not just whether Shopify beats quarterly expectations, but whether its AI, payments, international, and enterprise growth story is gaining strength.
Iryna Tolmachova / Getty Images
AI shopping has reached checkout
AI shopping is no longer a theoretical concept.
Amazon recently introduced Alexa for Shopping, which combines Rufus and Alexa+ to help customers compare products, track price history, build carts, and reorder essentials.
For eligible products, consumers can use Amazon’s Buy for Me agentic AI feature to shop across the web.
Walmart and Google are also pushing AI shopping closer to the checkout process.
Google’s Gemini shopping expansion includes partnerships with Walmart, Shopify, Wayfair, and other retailers, allowing shoppers to find products and, in some cases, buy without leaving the Gemini chat.
Microsoft is adding a similar layer to Copilot.
The company’s Copilot Checkout feature can show a buy option inside an AI conversation, then open an in-chat checkout flow where shoppers enter shipping and payment details and confirm a purchase.
Microsoft’s initial retail partners include Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Ashley Furniture, and some Etsy sellers, while PayPal, Stripe, and Shopify are working with Microsoft on payments.
For merchants, this change is big.
If shoppers increasingly buy through AI surfaces, merchants need their product data, inventory, pricing, and checkout systems to work inside those interfaces.
But Shopify isn’t just waiting to see how AI changes online retail.
It is helping build some of the infrastructure that could support it.
The company already holds a big 14%+ share of total US e-commerce, second only to Amazon.
To leverage this scale as consumer behavior shifts, Shopify has co-developed the Universal Commerce Platform (UCP), an open-standard technical framework built alongside major technology and payments companies, including Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Stripe, and Salesforce.
The UCP serves as a critical strategic lever by standardizing exactly how autonomous AI agents discover inventory, negotiate terms, and complete transactions across the web.
By aligning with such companies, Shopify is effectively positioning its backend ecosystem to remain important as AI becomes an increasingly important part of digital commerce.
Shopify earnings will test AI-commerce case
Shopify’s first-quarter results already gave Wall Street a strong base for the AI-commerce debate.
The company said revenue rose 34% in the quarter ended March 31, 2026, while free cash flow margin was 15%.
Gross merchandise volume, the total dollar value of orders facilitated through Shopify’s platform, cleared $100 billion in the quarter, reaching $100.7 billion.
Shopify also told investors it expected second-quarter revenue to grow at a high-twenties percentage rate year over year.
It expects gross profit dollars to grow at a mid-twenties rate, operating expenses to be 35% to 36% of revenue, and free cash flow margin to be in the mid-teens.
BofA’s longer-term model is more bullish than a single quarter.
The firm expects Shopify revenue to grow 24% to 28% annually from fiscal 2026 through fiscal 2028, supported by three drivers: agentic commerce, international expansion, and larger enterprise merchants
The AI data in the note is especially important because it shows the shift is already showing up in Shopify’s merchant activity.
BofA said AI-driven traffic to Shopify merchants rose eightfold year over year in the first quarter, while orders from AI-powered searches increased about 13 times.
New-buyer orders from AI surfaces were occurring at nearly twice the rate of traditional channels.
BofA also highlighted Shopify’s Catalog product, which feeds inventory and pricing into AI agents, and Sidekick, Shopify’s AI assistant for merchants.
The firm said traffic from Catalog-powered AI searches converted to purchases at twice the rate of general AI search traffic, while Sidekick weekly active users were up fourfold year over year.
The point is not that every shopper is suddenly handing purchases to a bot.
Most AI shopping systems still require confirmation, limits, or other controls before money changes hands.
The bigger shift is that checkout is moving closer to the AI conversation itself.
That could make Shopify less visible to consumers, but more important to merchants that need to be available wherever shoppers start.
Shopify has more than one growth driver
BofA’s call on Shopify is not limited to AI.
International growth is another key part of the firm’s bullish case.
BofA said international gross merchandise volume for Shopify rose 45% year over year in the first quarter, faster than overall GMV growth.
The firm also said Shop Pay’s gross merchandise volume outside the U.S. grew more than 70% year over year.
This is important because Shopify, which is already a major U.S. commerce platform, still has room to expand globally as more merchants adopt localized payments and cross-border tools.
Shopify’s move upmarket is also important.
The company built its reputation with small and midsize merchants, but larger sellers are now becoming a bigger part of the story.
BofA said merchants with more than $25 million in GMV were Shopify’s fastest-growing cohort.
The number of merchants doing more than $100 million in GMV doubled over the past two years.
Shopify Plus’s monthly recurring revenue grew 20% year over year and represented 35% of total monthly recurring revenue, according to the note.
That enterprise shift could make Shopify’s revenue more durable if larger merchants increasingly use its payments, checkout, point-of-sale, and commerce tools over time.
Shopify faces AI and competition risks
The bullish case, however, is not without risks.
BofA said downside risks to its $150 Shopify price target include greater-than-expected disintermediation from AI-native commerce platforms.
A slower adoption of key merchant solutions, execution risk in international expansion, and increased competition as Shopify moves upmarket.
Those risks matter because AI could still change the balance of power in online retail.
If major AI platforms, marketplaces, or payment companies control more of the shopping journey, Shopify will need to prove that its infrastructure remains essential.
For investors, August 5 will be the next checkpoint.
Shopify’s Q2 earnings will show whether the company can keep posting strong growth while defending its place in the online shopping stack.
For shoppers and merchants, the bigger question is direct: when AI changes how people buy, will Shopify become less visible, or more powerful behind the scenes?
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