Shopify remains on a total tear. The company just posted:
- 30% revenue growth at $11.6 billion
- $2 billion in free cash flow
- GMV accelerating to +29%, and guided Q1 to grow in the low 30s — above what Wall Street expected.
- They even announced a $2 billion buyback.
And yet … it’s stock is down 28% so far in 2026. Down 38% from its 52-week high
So what exactly do the markets want here? 30% growth at nearly $12 billion in revenue with 17% free cash flow margins isn’t enough? Accelerating GMV growth at $378 billion isn’t enough? A B2B business nearly doubling isn’t enough?
The honest answer is that Shopify still trades at ~100x earnings and ~73x forward. At some point, even a great business has to grow into its valuation. But the disconnect between the stock and the underlying business has rarely been wider. The numbers below tell the story of one of the strongest businesses in all of B2B + commerce right now — regardless of what the stock does on any given Tuesday.
Let’s pull out the numbers that actually matter for founders:
1. $378 Billion in GMV, Up 29%. And Shopify Now Has Over 14% of US Ecommerce.
This is the number that should stop you in your tracks. Shopify processed $378 billion in gross merchandise volume in 2025, up 29% from $292 billion the year before. And they now command more than 14% of all US ecommerce — and expect further penetration.
That’s not a platform. That’s infrastructure. And the growth is accelerating, not decelerating: GMV growth went from +20% in 2023 to +24% in 2024 to +29% in 2025. At $378 billion. Most companies slow down at scale. Shopify is speeding up.
For founders building on or around Shopify’s ecosystem, this is the number that tells you the TAM underneath you is expanding, fast.
2. Shopify Payments Penetration Hit 66% of GMV — Up from 45% Just Five Years Ago. That’s $248 Billion in Payments Volume.
This is the compounding engine inside the compounding engine. In 2020, Shopify Payments processed 45% of GMV. By 2025 that’s 66%, and in Q4 alone it hit 68%. Gross Payments Volume went from $54 billion to $248 billion in five years.
The lesson here is profound for any B2B founder: if you can make your add-on product the default, you can grow faster than even your core business. Shopify Payments grew faster than Shopify itself because penetration increased alongside GMV growth. Two compounding curves multiplied together.
Merchant Solutions (the payments-heavy segment) is now 76% of total revenue. Subscriptions are just 24%. Shopify has become a fintech company that happens to sell commerce software.
3. B2B Commerce Grew 96% YoY, with Every Quarter Above 84%.
This one matters for the B2B crowd. Shopify’s B2B business nearly doubled in 2025, growing 96% for the full year. And the quarterly cadence was strong throughout: 109% in Q1, 101% in Q2, 98% in Q3, 84% in Q4.
Yes, it’s decelerating quarter over quarter — but 84% growth in the slowest quarter is a number most B2B companies would trade their entire roadmap for. Carrier, Dermalogica, and Progress Lighting are among the brands using Shopify for B2B now.
The bigger insight: the best horizontal platforms eventually go upmarket and into B2B. It’s a second act that can be as big as the first. Shopify is proving that B2B doesn’t have to be a separate product — it can be a surface on the same unified platform.
4. Free Cash Flow Hit $2 Billion on a 17% Margin — After Being Negative in 2022.
The profitability turnaround here is remarkable. In 2022, Shopify burned $186 million in free cash flow (a -3% margin). By 2023, they’d flipped to $905 million positive (13% margin). In 2024: $1.6 billion (18%). And 2025: $2.0 billion (17%).
That’s a swing from negative $186 million to positive $2 billion in three years — while growing revenue 30%. The gross margin has compressed slightly (from 50.4% in 2023 to 48.1% in 2025) as payments become a bigger share of the mix, but operating leverage more than made up for it. Operating expenses as a percentage of revenue dropped from 60% in Q1 2023 to just 29% in Q4 2025.
The founder takeaway: Shopify proved you can run the classic “grow first, optimize later” playbook even at massive scale. But they had to get disciplined about it. The logistics divestiture, the headcount cuts — those were the hard choices that unlocked the cash flow.
5. The Q1 2015 Merchant Cohort Has Grown 3.2x Over 10 Years — A 12% Revenue CAGR from the Same Group of Merchants.
This might be the most underrated slide in the entire deck. Shopify showed that merchants who joined in Q1 2015 are now generating 3.2x the revenue they generated in their first year. That’s a 12% CAGR on revenue from a single cohort, over a decade.
And the pattern holds across every cohort — Q1 2016, Q1 2017, all the way through Q1 2025. Each newer cohort tracks above the prior one at the same age.
This is the holy grail of B2B: negative net revenue churn at scale, not because you’re raising prices, but because your customers genuinely grow into more of your product. More GMV. More payments. More shipping. More capital. More surfaces. The flywheel works.
For any founder thinking about their cohort economics: if your oldest cohorts aren’t expanding, you don’t have a platform. You have a tool.
Bonus: Shopify Shipped 700+ Features in 24 Months and Is Now Selling to ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Copilot via “Agentic Storefronts”
The product velocity here is worth noting. Shopify launched 100-150+ features every six months through their Editions drops, totaling 700+ in the last two years. Their AI assistant Sidekick generated almost 4,000 custom apps and 29,000+ automations in just the three weeks following their Winter ’26 Editions release. 1.2 million photos edited.
But the strategic move that matters most: Shopify co-developed the Universal Commerce Protocol with Google and now has integrations with ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot for “Agentic Storefronts” — letting merchants sell directly inside AI chat interfaces. They even launched an “Agentic Plan” for brands not currently on Shopify to access this. That’s a TAM expansion play disguised as an AI feature.
When you’re the commerce infrastructure layer and AI agents need to buy things on behalf of consumers, you want to be the protocol they talk to. Shopify is positioning for that future right now.
Everything Is Going Right for Shopify. Except the Stock Price.
Shopify at $11.6 billion is almost the definition of platform compounding. Revenue up 30%. GMV up 29%. Payments penetration climbing every single quarter. B2B nearly doubling. $2 billion in free cash flow. And merchant cohorts that keep expanding year after year.
The lesson for founders: build the thing merchants (or customers) can’t leave, then keep adding surfaces they can sell through and products they adopt as they grow. That’s the formula. Shopify is living proof it works — even at $11.6 billion revenue run-rate.
