Shopify (SHOP) Stock; Sinks About 7% as Investors Weigh AI Commerce Spending Plans

TLDRs;

• Shopify delivered $11.6 billion in 2025 revenue, with accelerating growth, strong margins, and record free cash flow generation.
• Shares fell about 7% as investors focused on rising AI commerce investment and near-term margin variability.
• Merchant Solutions, especially payments and POS tools, are driving Shopify’s revenue mix and scalability.
• Shopify is betting on AI-assisted shopping infrastructure to anchor future growth across platforms.

Shares of Shopify (NYSE: SHOP) slid roughly 7% in recent trading, even as the company posted one of its strongest financial years on record. The pullback highlights a familiar tension in growth stocks: exceptional current performance versus uncertainty around future investment intensity, this time centered on Shopify’s expanding push into AI-driven commerce infrastructure.

The selloff came after investors digested Shopify’s full-year 2025 results and forward commentary, which combined robust revenue, cash flow, and merchant activity with a cautious tone on near-term margins as the company accelerates spending tied to artificial intelligence and agentic commerce.

Blowout 2025 Financial Performance

Shopify closed 2025 with $11.6 billion in revenue, marking 30% year-on-year growth, an acceleration from 26% growth in 2024. Fourth-quarter revenue climbed 31%, underscoring sustained momentum heading into year-end.

Shopify Inc., SHOP

The company also delivered $2 billion in free cash flow for the year, translating into a 19% free cash flow margin and extending its streak to ten consecutive quarters of double-digit free cash flow. Operating income reached $1.5 billion, reinforcing Shopify’s transition from a high-growth platform to a highly profitable commerce infrastructure provider.

Gross merchandise volume (GMV) rose 29% year-over-year, reaching more than three times its 2020 level, a signal that merchant activity continues to scale well beyond pandemic-era baselines. Growth was broad-based, spanning large enterprises, small businesses, international markets, online storefronts, and offline retail channels.

Merchant Solutions Drive Growth

A key theme behind Shopify’s outperformance has been the increasing dominance of transaction-based Merchant Solutions, rather than subscription revenue alone.

In the fourth quarter, Merchant Solutions revenue jumped 35%, far outpacing the 17% growth posted by Subscription Solutions. This segment includes payments, capital, and point-of-sale tools, areas where Shopify earns a share of each transaction rather than a fixed monthly fee.

Shopify Payments processed $84 billion in GMV during Q4, accounting for 68% of total GMV, up four percentage points from the prior year. That shift reflects Shopify’s growing ability to embed itself deeper into the checkout process, capturing more value as merchants scale.

Offline commerce also contributed meaningfully, as Shopify’s POS tools gained traction among brick-and-mortar retailers seeking unified online and in-store systems.

AI Commerce Push Raises Questions

Despite the strong numbers, investors appear cautious about what comes next. Shopify is increasingly positioning itself as infrastructure for AI-assisted shopping, rather than simply an ecommerce platform.

Central to this strategy is the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), co-developed with Google. Shopify describes UCP as shared rails that allow AI agents, such as those operating on platforms like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, or Google’s AI Mode, to initiate purchases without bypassing Shopify’s checkout or merchant economics.

The company is also rolling out agentic storefronts, designed to push product listings directly into AI interfaces, and an agentic commerce plan that allows brands outside Shopify’s ecosystem to sell through these AI platforms using Shopify as the backend.

While the opportunity is significant, markets are weighing the cost of building and maintaining this infrastructure. Management emphasized that UCP is “infrastructure, not a product,” a framing that underscores long-term ambition, but also near-term spending commitments.

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