Past performance does not predict future returns. You may get back less than you originally invested. Reference to specific securities is not intended as a recommendation to purchase or sell any investment.
This article is featured in the Q3 2026 Future Strategist newsletter, you can read the rest of the newsletter here.
Since AI made waves in November 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT, most users have experienced AI as a clever and efficient chatbot – ask a question and it delivers a convincing response. Now, another wave of disruption is arriving with AI agents that aim to become your personal Chief of Staff. These agents combine a language model with memory and access to their own cloud computer, therefore allowing them to use browsers, email, apps and payment services on your behalf. Ask an agent to organise a long weekend away and it can check your calendar, compare flights and hotels and even make the booking. However, the catch is that usefulness requires access and in turn trust. AI agents can make mistakes, misunderstand instructions or be manipulated. Unlike a bad AI chatbot answer, a bad agent action has consequences.
Instinct versus Muse: trust versus distribution
Search has long been the internet’s gateway for the user. You type a query and receive ranked pages, dramatically reducing the cost and time of finding information. AI agents now promise to reduce the cost and time of acting on it. Search gave us the links, agents will do the work. Today, two AI agents competing in the headlines are Instinct and Muse.
Instinct is the startup. The interface is simple and intuitive with users communicating through text message or WhatsApp, as they would a person. Founder Noah Shinn stated that they are growing roughly 10% a day and handling more than $1 billion in annualised transaction volume already, with around half coming from travel. With just 14 employees, Instinct recently raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation. Investors are clearly betting on the AI agent revolution and their ability to earn a share from merchants when users transact.
Muse, meanwhile, is the incumbent response, backed by Meta’s vast compute, capital and distribution. Available through its own app and Meta owned WhatsApp, it passed five million downloads within weeks of its 8 September launch, despite being limited to the US and Canada. That rapid uptake illustrates Meta’s distribution advantage with an enormous existing audience to which it can promote to. Investors have embraced the potential for Meta too. Shares finished September up more than 25%. Muse gives them a tangible reason to believe its AI spending could produce a new consumer platform.
Muse surpasses 5m US downloads in 22 days post-launch
Source: Sensor Tower
Meta's Muse Rally
Bloomberg, 1 October 2026
As agents become the starting point for e-commerce, websites risk is fading into the background, shifting power from whoever owns the storefront to whoever guides the buying decision.
The AI agent commerce war
Meta’s immediate strategy with Muse is to plug into commerce rather than rebuild it. Integrations with Stripe, Shopify and PayPal have given it access to much of the US e-commerce landscape, with one notable exception – Amazon. These partnerships serve different purposes. Shopify Catalog helps agents discover products to recommend while payment rails help to complete the purchase.
Amazon has chosen to defend the front door. The company has blocked third-party agents, citing unauthorised access, lack of identification, and privacy and security concerns. Those objections matter, but so do the economics. Amazon’s moat extends beyond its product catalogue to the recommendations, sponsored placements and advertising surrounding every purchase. An outside agent could bypass those lucrative surfaces, leaving Amazon only the fulfilment. Amazon is defending its position between the merchant and the customer.
Shopify has a different calculation. The company wins when its merchants sell and Shop Pay remains in the flow. Expedia is making a similar trade off, allowing agents to search and book hotels while remaining the merchant of record. Both are willing to let an agent own more of the customer interaction to preserve their role in the transaction. Instinct stated 35% of its users currently use it for personal shopping, showing just how lucrative it can get.
This is aggregator versus aggregator. AI agents want to become the place where consumers express what they want and delegate the purchase, while Amazon wants to keep discovery and the transaction inside its walls. The pace of AI agent integrations suggests that access to merchants and payment rails can come quickly but winning control of the customer relationship is harder. Individuals may switch casually between Large Language Models for answers, but entrusting an agent with their preferences, payment details and permission to spend is a bigger ask.
The new gatekeepers
When agents go rogue who pays? Stories are already making the rounds of agents accidently booking non-refundable flights that didn’t account for time zones, to making its own mind and proactively purchasing items not requested. Further, with agents constantly monitoring emails, there is increasing talk of sophisticated phishing attacks to trick agents into paying fraudulent invoices. Was it the user’s unclear instructions or did the agent exceed its authority?
Those questions favour adoption in low-risk tasks and small purchases first. They also make payments, identity and fraud infrastructure as important as the models themselves. Today’s internet was built for humans. For an agentic commerce world to scale, the infrastructure must adapt: establish who agents represent, what they are authorised to do and how disputes should be resolved. Stripe, Shopify, Visa and Mastercard are contenders to help build that foundation of trust.
Agents may break down today’s gatekeepers only to become an even more powerful toll collector. This is the larger prize for companies like Meta, becoming the aggregator of aggregators, sitting above the marketplaces and platforms that already control access to demand. If it succeeds, it could redirect value across entire industries. From Instinct and Muse to Amazon’s roadblock, the battle for agentic commerce and the next gatekeepers have begun. Search organised the internet and now agents want permission to operate it – taking a cut in the process.
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Key risks
Past performance does not predict future returns. You may get back less than you originally invested.
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