Amazon has blocked Meta's new Muse AI shopping agent from crawling its site, while Shopify has embraced it as a partner. The split reveals a deeper divide: Muse threatens Amazon's high-margin advertising business, while it gives Shopify's merchants and payment platform wider exposure to shoppers.
Meta's new AI agent, Muse, has split the e-commerce industry since its Sept. 8 launch. Amazon blocked Muse from crawling its platform, while Shopify is one of the many partners Muse has attracted since launch.
Muse's early momentum puts pressure on retailers
Muse has accumulated more than 5 million downloads according to Sensor Tower estimates, and Meta is backing the app with its marketing muscle. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at Meta Connect that Muse will make people money, whether by canceling unused subscriptions, finding unclaimed property, or acting as a smarter online shopper. Meta shares trade at $728.08, up 0.3% on the day, giving the company a market cap of $1.9 trillion.
Shopify sees an upside, Amazon sees a threat
Shopify's merchant solutions segment is its largest and fastest-growing business, fueled largely by its ShopPay payment platform. As more shoppers route purchases through Muse and other agents, Shopify's merchants gain more exposure, and ShopPay's share of gross merchandise value could climb — a dynamic that may make Shopify willing to share revenue with Meta. Shopify shares changed hands at $151.39, up 1.54% on the day.
Amazon's calculus is different. The company has built an advertising business that generated $76 billion over the last 12 months, only 12% of its total retail operations revenue but high-margin enough to have driven its overall operating margin higher in recent years. If agents like Muse crawl Amazon's site instead of shoppers browsing it directly, that could mean fewer chances to show ads — a risk that also applies to Walmart, which leans on advertising for profit growth.
Amazon's logistics and Prime base remain its defense
Still, Amazon holds advantages that could limit the damage. Its logistics network can deliver millions of items to U.S. households within hours, and its shopping and purchase data could make using Amazon's own first-party shopping agent much more appealing for most shoppers. Tens of millions of Prime members, drawn by fast shipping and streaming perks, are likely to keep checking Amazon first and treat Muse as a secondary option. Amazon shares rose to $251.52, up 1.32%, lifting its market cap to $2.7 trillion.
It could still strike deals that let agents in while inserting sponsored listings, or push shoppers toward its own agentic platform instead. If Muse grows the total pool of online commerce, Shopify and Meta both gain, but Amazon's physical fulfillment network is not something easily replicated.
Source: The Motley Fool
Trading involves risk.
Risk Disclaimer
