Future Commerce Shopify ‘26 Winter Editions: Tools for the Commerce Renaissance
Dec 11, 2025
Mani Fazeli, VP of Product at Shopify, dives into the transformative world of agentic commerce. He discusses how Shopify is democratizing powerful AI tools with innovations like Sidekick and SimGym. Mani highlights the evolving nature of discovery, emphasizing that friction can add value in certain contexts. He also reveals that structured data will become the new SEO, enhancing the merchant experience. Their conversation showcases a future where utility trumps flashiness, ensuring merchants gain meaningful insights and improvements.
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Dogfooding AI Reveals Real Merchant Needs
- Shopify built internal AI tooling and dogfooded it to learn what merchants need every day.
- They used simulators to generate synthetic conversations and train agent behavior before product launch.
Prioritize Utility Over Flash
- Focus on utility rather than flashy demos when building AI for merchants.
- Build platform hooks first so agents can act across admin features reliably.
Buyer Simulations Scale Decision Confidence
- SimGym simulates buyer personas to help merchants test store changes before real traffic.
- The tool uses Shopify's massive transaction data to tune personas like window shoppers and high-intent buyers.
