AI Shopping Surge: DTC Orders via ChatGPT Up 1481%, Dominating New Channel
AI Chat Commerce: From Novelty to Mainstream Channel
The latest e-commerce growth engine isn’t a new ad platform or social network—it’s conversation itself. In 2025, the number of DTC orders placed through conversational AI, such as ChatGPT plugins, skyrocketed by 1,481% year-over-year, marking nearly 15× growth off a small but fast-rising base (LinkedIn).
Padmakar Roy
The numbers are telling: ChatGPT traffic on Shopify stores rose from negligible in January 2025 to over 0.1% of all sessions by August (Shopify Community). Across millions of sessions, this shift signals a seismic change in how people discover and buy.
And it’s not just browsing: ChatGPT now processes roughly 50 million shopping queries daily (LinkedIn). In just three months, ChatGPT referred 65 million visits to e-commerce sites (LinkedIn). Its share of shopping-related queries soared from under 1% to over 8% of Amazon’s search volume (LinkedIn). AI agents aren’t just recommending products—they’re closing sales.
ChatGPT’s Agentic Commerce: How the Channel Was Won
Why is ChatGPT dominating AI commerce? OpenAI moved swiftly, launching the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) in mid-2025, allowing brands to integrate product catalogs directly into ChatGPT with native in-chat checkout (LinkedIn). By partnering with Shopify, ChatGPT transformed into a storefront for hundreds of thousands of DTC brands.
Imagine a customer asking, “I need a gift for a 5-year-old,” receiving tailored recommendations, asking follow-up questions, and completing the purchase—all within ChatGPT (LinkedIn). The brand remains the merchant of record, seeing the order in Shopify while the “storefront” is a conversation.
Competitors are rushing to catch up. Google’s Gemini AI piloted conversational shopping with Walmart in late 2025, but final checkout still happens on Walmart’s site (LinkedIn). Amazon hasn’t integrated its catalog with ChatGPT yet, offering DTC brands a rare chance to stand out (LinkedIn). As a result, ChatGPT handled 97% of all AI-driven purchases in 2025 (LinkedIn).
The 4% Shopify Fee: Commerce Toll Booths Return
When money flows, platforms take their cut. In January 2026, Shopify introduced a 4% fee on all orders completed via ChatGPT’s checkout (LinkedIn), on top of standard processing fees. For DTC founders, this was a wake-up call: platform rent is back, and it’s being levied at the point of discovery.
As Simon Taylor noted, “Every time discovery centralizes, a toll booth appears. AI is the next one” (LinkedIn). Some worry brands will become dependent on AI intermediaries, losing both margin and control—just as with Google and Facebook.
Others see the fee as a performance tax: if the AI channel converts, it might be worth it. Shopify insists merchants “stay in control”—orders flow through their admin, attribution is transparent, and customer data is retained (LinkedIn). The real question: does your current site convert better than an AI-guided conversation? If not, a few extra points in fees may be the price of scale—as long as you can bring those customers back for repeat purchases off-platform (LinkedIn).
The DTC Operator’s Playbook: Readiness for AI Shopping
DTC operators aren’t just observing this channel—they’re updating their playbooks for the “agentic commerce” era. Winning in AI-driven shopping means optimizing for algorithms, not just eyeballs.
Here’s what the best-in-class are doing:
- Data Hygiene: AI agents rely on structured, clean product data. If your feeds, schema, and inventory aren’t pristine, your products may not even surface in chat (LinkedIn).
- Customer Sentiment: AI parses reviews and return rates, not just star averages. Consistent complaints (even in text, not just ratings) can sink your visibility in agentic commerce (LinkedIn).
- Brand Authority: Trust signals matter. Inconsistent info, outdated policies, or negative press can lead to your brand being ignored by AI agents (LinkedIn).
The new optimization frontier is AI search ranking—ensuring your products and brand are top results for natural-language queries inside chat (LinkedIn). Think SEO, but for bots, not just browsers.
Forward-thinking brands are also redesigning their stores to play well with conversational commerce—deploying chatbots that mirror ChatGPT’s experience, creating FAQ-rich landing pages, and ensuring product data is tailored for AI discovery (LinkedIn). In this new environment, a niche DTC player with great data and a trusted reputation can be surfaced as easily as a billion-dollar brand (LinkedIn).
Bjorn Bergstrom
Automation Meets the Human Touch: Why Hybrid Wins
Automation alone isn’t enough. While AI agents excel at surfacing products and answering common questions, real conversion often requires a human touch—especially for higher-consideration purchases or when a customer’s concern falls outside the script.
This is where platforms like LiveRecover come in. LiveRecover is an SMS cart recovery solution powered by real human agents. When a shopper abandons their cart, LiveRecover’s team personally texts the customer, answers objections, and helps close the sale in real time. The result? Recovery rates that consistently beat automated flows, because customers feel like they’re communicating with a human—not a bot. This preserves brand trust and boosts recovered revenue.
For DTC operators, the lesson is clear: combine the scale of automation with the empathy of human connection. Whether it’s recovering carts or responding to nuanced pre-purchase questions, the winners are building systems that flex between bot and human—meeting customers on their terms, in their preferred channel.
The Reality Check: Is AI Shopping All Hype?
Despite the explosive growth, many shoppers are still feeling out AI-driven purchases. Fifty-eight percent of consumers have used AI to research products, but just 17% are comfortable letting an AI agent complete a purchase on their behalf (ChannelEngine). Trust and UX are still evolving.
ChannelEngine
The current sweet spot for this channel is complex, research-heavy products—think electronics or appliances—where text-based Q&A beats clicking through endless pages. For visually-driven categories like apparel or home décor, chat commerce still feels clunky (LinkedIn). Expect rapid evolution here as AI platforms integrate richer visuals, reviews, and even AR try-ons.
The Bottom Line: Ride the Wave, Don’t Wait It Out
Agentic commerce isn’t a future trend—it’s here, and it’s scaling at triple-digit rates. ChatGPT’s 15× channel growth is a wake-up call for every DTC founder. The brands that win will treat “conversational readiness” as a must-have: structuring data, optimizing for AI search, building prompt-friendly product pages, and maintaining human-powered touchpoints where they matter most (LinkedIn).
As the playbook gets written in real time, one principle is clear: meet customers where they are—even if that’s inside a ChatGPT conversation. Ignore the channel, and you’re likely to pay the “platform rent” without seeing the upside. Get ahead of it, and you have a shot at building deeper relationships, recovering more revenue, and future-proofing your DTC brand.
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