Shopify

Picks-and-shovels infrastructure for the long tail of commerce.

Latest filing on file · 2025-12-31

Revenue: $11.6B; FY2025 · USD; 10-K · period ended 2025-12-31Source
Operating margin: 12.7%; FY2025; Operating income / revenue · filingSource
Operating cash flow: $2.0B; FY2025 · USD; 10-K · period ended 2025-12-31Source
Capital expenditures: $26M; FY2025 · USD; 10-K · period ended 2025-12-31Source

Overview

Business model and origins

Every merchant who wants to sell online needs the same things Amazon has: payments, inventory, shipping, marketing tools. Give those tools to merchants who want to stay independent instead of selling through Amazon.

1 episode2026-06 case file as of

Origin

Tobias Lütke tried to build an online snowboard shop in 2004 and couldn't find adequate software. He built his own, using Ruby on Rails, and launched Snowdevil. Other merchants asked to use the platform. In 2006 Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake launched Shopify as a standalone product. The business model: charge merchants a monthly subscription plus a payment processing take-rate. The strategy: 'arm the rebels' — give independent merchants the full stack of e-commerce tools that Amazon has, enabling them to compete without selling through Amazon. Shopify IPO'd in May 2015 at $17/share; by 2021 it briefly became the most valuable company in Canada.