The next battle in e-commerce may not be over who owns the biggest online store. It could be over who controls the AI agent deciding what consumers buy, where they buy it and how the transaction gets completed.
JPMorgan’s Doug Anmuth sees that shift creating a potentially new revenue stream for Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) — but also a new battleground with Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) and other platforms.
The Agent Becomes the Middleman
Meta’s Muse is being built to do more than answer questions. JPMorgan says early use cases already span shopping, restaurant reservations, travel planning and other multi-step tasks, while Meta has added Shop Pay for agentic checkout and opened Muse connectors to developers.
That matters because the economics of the internet could change if consumers increasingly ask an agent to complete a task rather than visit individual websites themselves.
Anmuth expects transactions to eventually move toward agent-to-agent interactions, with businesses deploying their own agents on Muse. Meta could then potentially monetize those transactions through commissions or a take rate — essentially collecting a fee when its AI helps make the transaction happen.
The Information adds an important wrinkle: Amazon has blocked Muse from accessing its shopping site, while Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW) CEO Nikesh Arora has described the episode as part of a potentially much larger battle involving the major technology and AI companies.
Who Owns the Transaction?
That conflict points to the bigger issue for investors. If an AI agent becomes the layer between a consumer and a retailer, the retailer may still own the inventory, fulfillment and customer relationship — but the agent could influence the decision that leads to the purchase.
The Information reported that Zuckerberg has discussed Muse making money by taking a small cut of transactions. It also noted that major platforms have an incentive to protect their data and customer relationships as agents begin operating across websites and apps.
That creates a new economic negotiation. Retailers may want the sales an agent generates, but they may not want to surrender part of the economics or control over how customers reach them.
The Next Meta Revenue Engine?
For Meta, that is why Muse could eventually become more important than another consumer AI app.
JPMorgan says the company has laid out a path to monetize its AI investments through consumer and business agents, as well as model API access. Anmuth also sees a potential market opportunity in the tens of trillions of dollars beyond Meta’s core advertising business.
For investors, the next signals to watch are not simply Muse downloads. They are business adoption, new connectors, agent-driven transactions and evidence that Meta can establish an economic model around those interactions.
The Amazon dispute may ultimately matter less as a one-off access fight than as an early test of whether Meta can turn Muse into the invisible layer through which commerce increasingly flows.
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