Shopify released its own announcements and documentation about Universal Commerce Protocol, while simultaneously introducing its Agentic plan, a new way for merchants on any platform to leverage Shopify's connection to agentic commerce.
Here's how it works:
- Merchants on third-party platforms sign up for Shopify's Agentic plan, which is currently on a waitlist.
- They list their products in Shopify Catalog, which Shopify describes as “our comprehensive collection of billions of products that uses specialized LLMs to categorize, enrich, and standardize product data to surface exactly what customers want in seconds.”
- Merchants can then connect their products to AI channels including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, and Google, as well as the Shop app and all future partners of Shopify Catalog.
Shopify said:
“The Agentic plan connects any brand, regardless of platform, to millions of customers by placing their products exactly where discovery happens. This means more choice for shoppers and broader reach for brands. When commerce flows freely across the entire ecosystem, everyone wins. With millions of merchants and billions of transactions processed, no platform understands commerce diversity like Shopify. We've spent decades building the infrastructure that lets businesses thrive, taking raw technological power and turning it into tools for millions of merchants. Now we're extending that foundation into the AI era.”
A few weeks ago I wrote, “Shopify's not becoming a marketplace. It's instead turning the entire Internet into its marketplace.”
At the time, I didn't realize that this Agentic plan was on the horizon, which seals the deal on Shopify's strategy.
By creating a unified gateway and product data hub that connects merchants on any e-commerce platform to its integrations with commerce partners, Shopify is positioning itself to become the host of the Internet's master product graph.
Tough break for Commerce. I commented a few months ago when they rebranded from BigCommerce that Feedonomics, which they own, should position itself exactly as Shopify just did with its Agentic plan, but they're nowhere to be seen in this conversation.