Shopify

Merchants can now use Sidekick voice mode in the Shopify mobile app. One of the first to try it out: Jimmy Donaldson, aka MrBeast. Voice mode makes it even easier to tackle tasks and get business insights on the go. It’s like having an AI-powered Shopify expert right in your pocket. 

Last year, we asked female-founded wellness brands to pitch us their businesses. 1,000 answered the call. The idea started with Sonsie Skin Inc., and a shared belief: brands grow faster when founders support founders. That’s why we co-created the Mindful Beauty Award, putting $100,000 in resources and mentorship behind entrepreneurs ready to take their next step. From the pitches, we selected 3 top prize winners: Yasmin I., founder of Daea, Marina Furstoss Winfield, founder of Embrace the Heat, and Michaela Phillips, founder of Iris Eyecare. Thank you to every founder who shared their story. The future of wellness is here because of you.

Last month, more people started businesses than ever before. The driver? Uncertainty. The record surge in people becoming entrepreneurs isn’t a fluke. It’s a rejection of the myth of stability. Entrepreneurship offers something rare: agency. The ability to build from your own vision instead of someone else’s. In 2026, bet on yourself.

From photography and baseball accessories to produce, January shopping was all over the place. We analyzed month-over-month sales from thousands of Shopify merchants in the U.S. to identify what was trending in January. Here's what stood out: → Sales for photography equipment increased, with lens caps up 203%, followed by film developers (+99%) and photographic chemicals (+84%). → As spring training approaches, baseball gear is trending upward, led by batting helmets (+68%) and pitching mounds (+63%). → Door push plates (+92%), bolt cutters (+91%), and door closers (+90%) all saw over 90% growth, indicating a surge in home hardware. → Shoppers purchased fresh produce, including sweet potatoes (+118%), tomatoes (+73%), potatoes (+68%), and garlic (+59%). Entrepreneurs, what products drove your January sales?

Partners, dot dev is back for 2026. And this year, we’re doubling the fun. Our annual event for developers and builders is expanding to two full days. Save the date: July 21–22 in Toronto. That’s twice the time to get hands-on with the latest Shopify tools, meet the product teams behind them, and connect with partners across the ecosystem. Stay tuned for registration details → https://lnkd.in/gQnzdmiw

Shopify doesn’t pay patent trolls. They don’t build or invent, and only exist to extract settlements from people who *are* building. We litigate aggressively against them, exposing their funding networks and building a public record that others can use. I wrote about why we fight back and what to expect from us this year: https://lnkd.in/gWBEZkFx

Creatively blocked? Spark fresh ideas with our first-ever soap exclusive, Shower Thoughts. We partnered with soap brand Wary Meyers, founded by Linda and John Meyers—a husband-and-wife team known for breaking the mold with vibrant, imaginative, retro-inspired design. Their approach is refreshingly original, turning soap into usable art. That’s why we teamed up to create Shower Thoughts—a soap that celebrates the ideas that surface when you unplug and reset, and a reminder that inspiration can strike anywhere, even in the shower. Here’s to bold ideas, wherever they bubble up. What brand should we partner with next? Let us know in the comments.

Universal Commerce Protocol is the infrastructure agentic commerce runs on. It answers every question about the complexities of commerce: How do agents discover what merchants offer? How do they negotiate payment methods, fulfillment options, loyalty programs? How do they hand off when a transaction needs human input? We’ve been solving these problems at scale—and with UCP, we're opening the playbook. Ilya Grigorik deep dives on how we built UCP, and how you can build it with us → https://lnkd.in/euu7FEas

Shopify merchants, you’ll soon be able to sell directly in Google AI Mode and the Gemini app. Agentic commerce is the future. Today, we’re launching the Universal Commerce Protocol to accelerate that future. UCP is a new standard for bringing commerce into AI agents. It’s designed for all types of transactions and checkout flows, allowing customers to add discount codes, loyalty credentials, or subscription cadences right in the chat. We built the protocol with Google, and it’ll power native shopping on Google surfaces. The best part? It’s an open standard, so as new AI platforms enable commerce, they can adopt UCP too. For more: https://lnkd.in/eEJT4qXt