How does BigCommerce use AI for ecommerce growth?

BigCommerce uses AI in two distinct ways: to help merchants run their stores more efficiently, and to help them sell through AI-driven shopping experiences. The first is Companion, a personal AI chat assistant for store operations. The second is Agentic Commerce, positioned around the idea that "AI is the new shopper" — the platform's stated goal is to help brands become the first pick of that new shopper. Both sit alongside the rest of the platform (storefront, checkout, payments, inventory, multi-storefront, headless, B2B) rather than replacing it.

The two AI surfaces on the platform

BigCommerce presents AI as part of its platform menu, not as a separate product line. Two entries are explicitly AI-focused:

Alongside these, the platform lists Data & Analytics and Product Feed Management under "Sell Your Way," and Apps & Integrations with over 1,200 apps — the practical layer where product data gets structured and distributed.

Companion: AI for day-to-day operations

Companion is described as a personal AI chat assistant that helps you run your store more efficiently. The value proposition is operational rather than customer-facing: instead of navigating admin screens for routine questions and tasks, you interact with an assistant inside the commerce platform.

What the source supports is the framing — efficiency in running the store. It does not specify which tasks Companion can execute, what data it can access, or whether it can take actions versus only answer questions. If those details matter to your decision, treat them as open questions to verify directly rather than assuming full automation.

A reasonable way to evaluate it: pick the three operational tasks that consume the most time in your store today (for example, checking inventory status across storefronts, reviewing promotion setup, or pulling a sales summary), then ask during a demo whether Companion covers them.

Agentic Commerce: selling to AI shoppers

The homepage headline "Get your brand ready for agentic commerce" and the section "AI is the new shopper. Be its first pick." define this second surface. The premise is that purchasing decisions will increasingly be mediated by AI agents acting on a shopper's behalf, and brands need their product data and presence structured so those agents can find and select them.

This is a positioning and readiness play. The source does not detail the technical requirements, standards, or integrations involved. What it does signal is direction: BigCommerce is treating AI-mediated discovery as a channel to prepare for, in the same family as the other channels it already supports (marketplaces, advertising, feed management, multi-storefront).

If you sell across many channels already, the practical question is whether your product feed and catalog data are clean and complete enough to be consumed by an AI agent. That work overlaps heavily with existing feed management and data quality efforts.

Where AI fits in the broader platform

AI is not the whole story, and it's worth seeing it in context. BigCommerce's platform menu groups capabilities into:

• Start & Build — product overview, agentic commerce, design your store (with or without code), apps and integrations, migration from Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce, Magento and others
• Sell Your Way — B2B commerce, channels and advertising, product feed management, multi-storefront, headless commerce, international commerce, data and analytics
• Run Your Business — checkout, payments, inventory, shipping, promotions, Companion

This matters because AI features only create value on top of functioning commerce infrastructure. A merchant with messy catalog data and no feed management won't get far with agentic commerce readiness; a merchant with clean data and multiple channels has a natural starting point.

How to decide whether this matters for you

Use these conditions to judge fit:

• You want operational time savings. Companion is the relevant surface. Ask for a concrete demo against your actual workflows before assuming it replaces manual admin work.
• You sell products that shoppers research heavily. Agentic Commerce readiness is more relevant when purchase decisions involve comparison and discovery, since that's where AI mediation is most likely to appear first.
• You already run multiple channels. If you manage feeds and catalogs for marketplaces or ads, extending that discipline toward AI-mediated channels is a smaller step.
• You're evaluating a migration. AI capability is one input among many. Weigh it against checkout, B2B, multi-storefront, and headless needs — the source lists migration paths from Shopify, WooCommerce, Salesforce, Magento and others, so compare on the dimensions you actually use.

What the source does not tell you

Pricing, plan tiers, and which AI features are included at which level are not specified in the available material — there is a pricing page, but no figures or inclusions are given here. Whether Companion or Agentic Commerce capabilities require specific plans, apps, or developer work is likewise unspecified. Treat those as questions for a demo or a direct check of the pricing page rather than assumptions.