Shopify shipped its Spring ’26 Edition, a twice-yearly release containing more than 150 updates centered on agentic commerce, designed to put merchants’ products directly inside AI channels including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google’s AI Mode.
The release frames the shift as inevitable: as AI lowers the cost of building software, anyone can create agent-powered apps with commerce built in, and Shopify wants merchant products to appear wherever those shoppers land first.
The infrastructure behind the push rests on two components enabled by default for Shopify merchants. Shopify Catalog structures product data into a global, searchable dataset that AI agents can read and recommend accurately, syndicating details to ChatGPT, Copilot, and the Shop app without requiring extra apps or manual feeds.
Shopify reports that AI searches powered by Catalog convert at twice the rate of those relying on scraped data. The Universal Commerce Protocol, co-developed with Google, gives AI agents a shared language covering the full commerce journey from discovery to checkout, incorporating each merchant’s specific checkout rules and discounts automatically.
A new Agentic Storefronts dashboard inside the Shopify admin lets merchants manage all their AI channels from one place. They can also view orders, sales, and conversions from ChatGPT, Copilot, Google’s AI Mode, the Gemini app, and Shop together.
Search intelligence shows merchants which AI queries in their category they already rank for and which they are missing, while Shopify’s AI assistant Sidekick suggests specific fixes, such as improving product titles or filling in missing specifications, when products appear in AI conversations but fail to convert.
Shopify says the approach is already producing results: red light therapy brand Omnilux saw AI channels drive 3.2% of total revenue in March, while luxury bedding brand Cozy Earth reported AI channel revenue up 20 times year over year.
The release also opens Shop Pay, Shopify’s one-click checkout, to brands not built on Shopify’s platform for the first time, giving them access to over 250 million Shop shoppers.
Additional updates include an AI sales associate embedded in storefront chat, expanded Shop Campaigns now reaching ChatGPT and Pinterest, and Sidekick gaining the ability to deliver business insights directly to an Apple Watch.
