Shopify is a long-term hold due to its role as e-commerce infrastructure, AI integration, and strong management driving growth.

One of these companies is Shopify. This is another long- term investment in my portfolio.

Shopify is a company I always come back to. This is of course one of the essential infrastructures in the long- term growth story of e-commerce. This is essentially the operating system for independent trade.

Everyone, from small family shops to huge global brands around the world.

As you know, its software, payment, and logistics suite powers the storefronts of more than one million merchants. A large part of its revenue comes from subscriptions, but the largest and fastest- growing part is its merchant solutions product .

Yes, "Shopify" for payments, "Shoppay" , and shipping. Essentially, Shopify takes a percentage of all transactions made through its platform.

If you look at some of its results for the last quarter, the second quarter, revenues amounted to approximately $3.6 billion. This represents a 34% year-on-year increase. The total volume of goods reached $116 billion.

This represents a 32% year-on-year increase. Free cash flow, $654 million . This represents a free cash flow margin of 18%.

Returning to the topic of artificial intelligence in business , this company continues to improve its platform by integrating new AI products to help its merchants sell better, improve merchant interaction with customers, improve shipping, and also improve product listings on merchant websites.

Many practical solutions in the background to help merchants sell more , which of course is reflected in Shopify's business, are powered by artificial intelligence.

In fact, Shopify participated in developing what is known as the Global Commerce Protocol with Google. This is an open standard , so AI agents can discover, negotiate with, and actually complete transactions with merchants without each brand needing to build custom integrations.

In fact, Shopify merchants were among the first vendors that ChatGPT could recommend and complete purchases from when OpenAI launched its proxy trading integration. The original in- conversational push payment feature from OpenAI was a partnership with Shopify that did not live up to expectations, but that was more due to OpenAI than Shopify.

But going back to the merchants' side, Shopify has its own AI-powered assistant called Sidekick. It primarily automates many of the workflows for merchants.

We saw something from Shopify CEO Harley Finkelstein on the second-quarter earnings call, where he said that artificial intelligence will accelerate entrepreneurship more than any other job.

Essentially, Shopify's management believes that brands are increasingly choosing the platform because it relieves them of the burden of developing an AI strategy for their business on their own.

Shopify handles the integration of artificial intelligence for them from the beginning.

Merchants had nearly 34 million conversations with Shopify's smart assistant Sidekick in the last quarter and used it to build more than 36,000 custom apps. Therefore, we clearly see the benefit of artificial intelligence for traditional e-commerce businesses. I think we can expect this growth to continue.

There are two other things I would like to mention, you know, this is a business that also benefits from growth in physical stores. I mean, they are expanding internationally. There are many merchants who have physical stores and use Shopify solutions.

Of course, there are many online brands, but there are also many traditional stores that take advantage of the tools provided by Shopify.

68% of the total merchandise value (GMV) on Shopify is now passed through their proprietary Shopify Payments tool. So, it is a high-quality and highly profitable business, and it actually uses artificial intelligence to help grow the business and their merchants, and this of course reflects positively on " Shopify".

Yes, what I really like about Shopify is that in a world where artificial intelligence is changing so many businesses and industries, it is extremely important to have world-class management.

Shopify has exactly this management team. World-class. They are always at the forefront. So, every time something new comes up, as I said, they are among the first to adopt these AI solutions.

They are also working on developing some of their own artificial intelligence solutions.

Why is this important? Because yes, in a world where not everyone has the time or patience to keep up with all the new gadgets that pop up, well, Shopify does most, if not all, of that for you .

That's why we've seen, I mean, that " Sidecake" is so popular .

They saw an 8% increase in new traders reaching their first five orders directly. This accelerates the growth of gross cargo volume (GMV). We need to see people starting their businesses or improving their stores faster and more efficiently.

Of course, if Shopify, as a company, has already adopted the latest tools available.

As a Shopify user, I don't have to do much, do I ? You're just updating a few things here and there. You are asking their smart chatbot to improve your stores. That's all. Of course, for me as a shop owner , this is great, because my results will look much better.

Shopify will see better results too, won't it? Growth in the total volume of goods across all sectors.

For someone using, say, "ChatGPT" or an AI proxy, well, they too will get better results, because this Shopify store is optimized for AI search results .

So, in a world where there aren't many companies, or when you look at this...let me rephrase that. If you view Shopify as merely a tool for building websites or online stores, yes, if that were all they were , they would be in real trouble .

But they do much more than that. They delve deep into the infrastructure layer to ensure their clients' success. If their customers are successful, then Shopify will be successful too.

If you view Shopify as merely a tool for building websites or online stores, yes, if that were all they were, they would be in real trouble.

I've talked about Shopify.

She spoke about Shopify and Airbnb, two interesting companies that continue to grow in the age of artificial intelligence, but receive far less attention from investors.