Shopify

(NASDAQ: SHOP · $179.22 ▲ 4.9%) Shopify is a global commerce company that provides tools to start, grow, market and manage a retail business of any size. It works in the commerce platform category, where software providers give merchants hosted storefronts, payments and back-office tools so they do not have to build and maintain that infrastructure themselves. The company lets merchants sell online and in person, on social channels and across AI channels, and manage payments, fulfillment, retail, inventory and catalog from a single admin.

Merchants can build an online store with AI or with prebuilt themes, and Shopify Markets supports international selling through localisation and delivery options. Sidekick, a commerce AI assistant built into the admin, is designed to surface growth opportunities and automate routine tasks, while Agentic Storefronts let shoppers check out directly inside AI chat interfaces. The Shopify App Store lists more than 21,000 commerce apps, and developers can work with the Universal Commerce Protocol, APIs and Hydrogen, a headless commerce toolkit for custom storefronts. This mix of a core platform, third-party extensions and developer tooling is typical of how commerce platforms serve both small sellers who want ready-made features and larger brands that need customisation. The company states that its platform and services are engineered for reliability, and its checkout with Shop Pay is presented as a way to reach a large pool of existing buyers.

Shopify powers millions of businesses in more than 175 countries, ranging from solo entrepreneurs to enterprises. Brands using it include Allbirds, Gymshark, PepsiCo and Staples, along with Mattel, Glossier, Steve Madden and Brooklinen. Serving very small and very large merchants on one platform means the same system has to handle a first sale and high-volume launches alike, which is why reliability under heavy traffic matters so much in this category.