Meta’s Muse AI: Good or Bad for E-Commerce? Shopify and Amazon Are Taking Opposite Approaches.
Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) is pushing on the gas pedal for its new artificial intelligence (AI) agent, Muse. Since launching on Sept. 8, the mobile app has accumulated more than 5 million downloads With Meta putting its marketing power behind the app, that number could climb even faster over the next few weeks
Muse is designed to help users get things done. In his keynote address at Meta Connect last week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Muse will make people money. That could come in the form of canceling unused subscriptions, finding unclaimed property, or, more likely, being a smarter online shopper.
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But not everyone is on board with agentic shopping. Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), the world’s largest online retailer, blocked Muse from its platform. Meanwhile, Shopify (NASDAQ: SHOP), which helps brands build their own e-commerce sites, has fully embraced agentic commerce and is among the many partners Muse has attracted since its launch.
Here’s why the e-commerce leaders are diverging, and what it means for investors in Meta, Amazon, and Shopify.
Will Muse improve sales for its e-commerce partners?
If Muse makes shopping online faster and easier, it seems likely that customers will spend more online. On the face of it, that seems to benefit any retailer plugging into Muse and other AI agents.
Shopify stands to benefit by making integration extremely easy for small retailers, increasing the value of using its platform. But it stands to benefit even more if more of the gross merchandise value sold online goes through ShopPay, its payment platform. The checkout option is ubiquitous across Shopify-built e-commerce sites, removing the friction of typing in payment information for every small merchant an online shopper might encounter these days.
Shopify’s merchant solutions are the largest and fastest-growing segment of its business, and that growth is largely fueled by its payment platform. That makes finding any way possible to get its merchants’ products in front of potential customers its No. 1 objective right now. As customers shop from more merchant websites, ShopPay becomes increasingly valuable, and its penetration of gross merchandise value increases. As such, Shopify may be willing to share some revenue with Meta, producing a win-win situation for both companies.
