Key Takeaways
- Shopify shares fell 8% today after its third-quarter revenue grew 32%, but its merchandise volume came in just short of Wall Street’s expectations.
- Shopify’s checkout runs inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Meta’s Muse. Amazon is building its own shopping agents and has fought to keep outside ones off its store.
- Amazon trades at a much lower multiple of expected earnings, but analysts expect Shopify’s earnings to grow faster through 2028: about 33% a year, against about 25% for Amazon.
- Shopify looks like the better bet on agentic shopping, as long as the companies that own the agents keep using its checkout at its standard rates.
Shopify (SHOP) shares fell 8% today after its third-quarter report. The timing is awkward, because Shopify has spent the year pitching itself as the checkout behind every AI shopping agent. Its president, Harley Finkelstein, said in the release that Shopify is “continuing to build commerce into every surface, every agent, and increasingly, everywhere.”
Amazon (AMZN), up 11% this year, has a different plan: build its own agents and keep everyone else’s off its store.
So if AI assistants end up doing a lot of the buying, which stock wins? Is it the platform behind millions of merchants, or the store that owns the customer?
A strong quarter that missed by a hair
Shopify’s third-quarter revenue grew 32% to $3.74 billion, and operating income jumped 66% to $568 million. Free cash flow came to $816 million, a 22% margin and well above the $723 million analysts expected.
But gross merchandise volume (GMV) of $119.1 billion came in just short of the $120.1 billion analysts expected. Shopify had also beaten the top of its own revenue guidance in each of the three quarters before this one. This time, 32% growth landed inside its guide for a low-thirties rate.
For the fourth quarter, Shopify again expects revenue to grow at a low-thirties rate, a touch above the roughly 30% analysts had expected going in.
Not bad at all.
TIKR tracks 54 analysts on Shopify. How many say “Buy”?
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Shopify plugs into every agent
Shopify merchants already sell through ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout. In January, Shopify and Google announced the Universal Commerce Protocol, which runs checkout in Gemini and Google’s AI Mode. Microsoft’s Copilot has Shopify’s checkout built in, and Meta’s Muse agent checks out with Shop Pay at Shopify’s existing payments rates.
Management says an order placed through an agent earns Shopify the same as one placed on a merchant’s own store. AI-driven orders to Shopify stores tripled in the second quarter from a year earlier. And last week, CEO Tobi Lütke counted 400 million Shop Pay users as Shop Pay started working inside personal AI agents and on stores that don’t run on Shopify.
Going into the report, analysts expected Shopify’s revenue to more than double, from $11.6 billion in 2025 to $24.3 billion in 2028. That’s about 28% a year.
Nothing in today’s fourth-quarter guidance makes me expect analysts to cut those numbers.
Amazon would rather build its own
Amazon’s answer is Rufus, the AI assistant in its app. CEO Andy Jassy has said Rufus is on track to add more than $10 billion of incremental annualized sales. Rufus can buy an item for you once it drops to a price you set. A Buy for Me button lets shoppers buy from other brands’ websites without leaving Amazon’s app.
Outside agents get a colder welcome. Amazon has blocked ChatGPT and Meta’s Muse from shopping its site. In November 2025, it sued Perplexity over the shopping agent in Perplexity’s Comet browser. A federal judge blocked Comet from Amazon’s site in March, but an appeals court overturned that order on Aug. 4.
Perplexity has argued that Amazon’s real worry is agents skipping the ads it shows human shoppers. I think that’s a fair worry: an agent shopping for you doesn’t scroll past sponsored listings.
Still, Amazon doesn’t need agents to grow its earnings. Analysts expect its normalized EPS to nearly double, from $7.17 in 2025 to $13.99 in 2028.
You pay up for the open platform
Shopify closed Monday at 74x the next twelve months’ expected earnings, right at its average over the past year. At this morning’s price, that’s in the high 60s. On 2027 estimates, Shopify trades at about 57x and Amazon at about 23x.
Analysts expect Shopify’s normalized EPS to grow about 33% a year from 2025 to 2028, against about 25% for Amazon. So with Shopify, you’re paying about two and a half times Amazon’s multiple for faster growth and a purer bet on agents.
Neither company has said what share of its sales comes through agents, so both bets still rest on what management tells us.
Shopify gets paid whichever agent wins
Ultimately, I think Shopify’s the better move. If agents do the shopping, a lot of purchases will start in ChatGPT, Gemini or Muse instead of Amazon’s app, and Shopify’s checkout sits behind all of them at its usual rates. Amazon has to make Rufus the agent people choose and also keep the others off its store.
Amazon still has a strong case. It’s far cheaper, analysts expect its earnings to nearly double by 2028 without any help from outside agents, and Rufus is already adding real sales. But if I’m betting on agentic shopping specifically, I’d rather own the company every agent needs.
Of course, I’m assuming that the companies that own the agents keep using Shopify’s checkout at standard rates. Watch whether Meta makes Meta Pay the default wallet in Muse, and what Shopify says about agent orders when it reports again in February.
So what is Shopify stock actually worth?
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Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
