What is Shopify and why is it significant to Canada's economy?

Shopify Inc. is an Ottawa-headquartered Canadian e-commerce platform that lets businesses build online stores, manage inventory and shipping, accept payments, and sell across multiple sales channels. Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake founded the company in 2006 after Lütke could not find a satisfactory e-commerce solution for his snowboard shop. Shopify now powers more than four million merchants worldwide, with over $235 billion in gross merchandise volume processed in 2023.

Shopify's initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange on May 21, 2015 was one of the largest Canadian tech IPOs of the decade. By the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, Shopify briefly surpassed the Royal Bank of Canada as the country's most valuable public company by market capitalisation, peaking at over $200 billion. Stock-market corrections in 2022 trimmed the value but Shopify remains one of Canada's most valuable companies and the largest publicly traded technology company.

The company is known for several distinctive product strategies. Shopify Plus serves enterprise merchants. Shopify Markets supports cross-border selling. Shop Pay is a one-click checkout used by hundreds of millions of consumers. Shopify Capital provides merchant financing. Shopify Fulfillment Network provides logistics, although the company sold its fulfillment business to Flexport in 2023 to focus on software. Shopify Audiences and Shopify Magic apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to merchant data.

Shopify is significant to Canada's economy beyond its market value. The company employs about 8,000 Canadians and Canadians-abroad as part of its globally distributed workforce, runs the Build Native programme to support Indigenous entrepreneurs, partners with Canadian universities on engineering and design education, and has helped legitimise Canada as a centre for software entrepreneurship. Tobias Lütke is a Companion of the Order of Canada and has been awarded the Public Policy Forum's Testimonial Award and the Canadian Marketing Association Hall of Legends induction. Shopify's Toronto and Ottawa offices, the Shopify Tower at the Bank Street Building, and the company's distinctive remote-first work culture have shaped expectations for Canadian tech.