AI chatbots and agents are still tiny, but growing fast. Shopify data from January 2025 shows orders from AI chatbots jumped 15-fold, agent traffic grew 8-fold, and overall sales doubled across millions of stores.
Are we actually at the beginning of a new commerce channel driven by AI agents, or is it just hype?
I wouldn't say we're at the beginning. I think we're smack dab in the middle of it. I think it's actually, it's happening whether we like it or not. You know, some of the stats from Shopify that were released, obviously those of you in the audience who are operators of e-commerce stores know that Shopify has been one one of the leaders in agentic commerce, and they're seeing since January 2025, 15x increase in orders from agents, sorry, through agentic commerce traffic coming from AI chatbots, 8x increase in traffic, and a 2x increase overall throughout the millions of Shopify stores throughout there. So I would say yes, to a certain degree we're at the beginning, but I would say that we're smack dab in the middle of it. There's no looking back.
Well, that's all the data certainly supports that. And Frank, you look at the real data, you run a Shopify or e-commerce store. What are you seeing?
Well, we're seeing— I would have said beginning. We're beginning to see the traffic. It's still very small numbers. We're talking less than 1%, less than half a percent of sales really coming driven through agents. However, I firmly believe that that number will continue to increase. It has absolutely been an exponential increase from almost nothing to numbers that now are visible. And, you know, you can make your prediction how long it'll be before this becomes a dominant part of our sales profile, but that day is certainly coming.
