Shopify is a strong performer due to consistent revenue growth, large addressable market share, and leadership in AI commerce partnerships.

I will talk about one of those companies shortly, which is Shopify. You are probably aware that Shopify is a software and payment platform. It allows independent traders to run their own online stores .

It is the infrastructure that supports more than one million online stores. Even very large brands like Tesla , LVMH, and Nestle.

It started more than 20 years ago when co-founder Toby Lotke couldn't find good e-commerce software for a skateboard shop, so he built his own. He then turned to selling that software.

Today, Shopify makes money in two ways. There are subscription fees across different categories, ranging from the small seller plan for family shops to the prices of large corporations.

So, it's the subscription fees and merchant solutions. So, think about things like Shopify payments. They receive a portion of each transaction, just like card network interchange fees.

They have their own payment system, Shop Pay, and Shopify Capital lending and shipping services, and of course, as the number of merchants increases, the volume of transactions increases, and an increasing portion of that volume is converted into higher-margin payments for the company over time.

Now, Meta and Shopify have just announced a partnership that will allow Muse to browse stores that operate through Shopify and complete purchases through Shop Pay. We have seen a slight increase in Shopify shares following this news.

This also comes at a time when Amazon has banned Muse from shopping on its site due to unauthorized access . So, we have two of the biggest e-commerce infrastructure companies betting on opposites for the same product in the same week .

Once again, this goes back to some of the security concerns we talked about at the beginning of today's episode. This is the deal that Shopify made with Meta to allow Muse to browse its stores and make decisions on behalf of users.

This is nothing new for Shopify. As you know, Shopify was actually OpenAI’s first smart commerce integration partner last year. Qualified traders in the United States have been listed by default to become discoverable within ChatGPT.

Shopify and Alphabet have jointly developed what is known as the Universal Commerce Protocol (UIP). This is an open standard that allows any AI agent to handle merchants without the need for custom integration.

In fact, Shopify has launched its own feature for smart agent-based storefronts. So, the company is moving strongly towards artificial intelligence and smart shopping.

This company continues to grow at a steady double-digit rate, with revenues reaching $3.6 billion in the last quarter. This represents a 34% year-on-year increase. The total value of goods sold (GMV) was $116 billion.

This was the fifth consecutive quarter in which the growth in total merchandise value exceeded 30%. Free cash flow amounted to approximately $654 million. Therefore, this is still a very well-run company .

AI agents aside, I have expressed reservations in the past about the extent to which they will play a role in the future of shopping. The global e-commerce market is still estimated to be worth around $7 trillion by 2026.

Shopify's share of that is still small. Therefore , there is a real growth opportunity for several years to come in itself.

But I would say if you're following trends in artificial intelligence and smart shopping, Shopify is certainly one of the companies that has been at the forefront of establishing a wide range of partnerships in this field.

Yes , yes, Rachel, I really like this company , and I think it's exciting to see two big players, one of them a giant like Amazon, taking positions in this proxy AI story.

There is this open-source platform that illustrates how proxy AI will move towards procurement processes. So, the market is already expecting something like this, yet one of the big players says: "No, hold off a bit."

Shopify is a company I like. I am not a shareholder, but I believe that their CEO is someone who is always up-to-date with technology and strives to innovate in this field. So, I really like this move here.

Obviously, we talk about AMD a lot in this channel, but in my opinion, Shopify is a new and distinctive addition here in this smart agent-driven economic phase.