Shopify is giving its engineers free rein on AI. Here’s why

COO Jess Hertz says the company is already seeing the payoff, with revenue growing 34% while head count stays flat, as Shopify races to become the infrastructure behind agentic shopping.

For decades, e-commerce rewarded the biggest brands that could buy their way to the top of search results. AI is changing that. Shopify COO Jess Hertz shares what Shopify’s data reveals about the agentic shopping revolution in real time, and how the company is building the infrastructure layer that makes products discoverable and purchasable by AI. Plus, why Shopify’s engineers can spend freely on AI tokens while the rest of the business world agonizes over ROI, and what it looks like when a company powering over 14% of online shopping decides to win the future or die trying.