VIDEO: I break down the AI battle between Meta, Shopify and Amazon.

Krish Raja — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 15:37:24 GMT

Muse, Dot and the next wave of agents are now going shopping. When an AI agent does your shopping, who actually gets paid?

Krish Raja — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 14:04:45 GMT

Same AI agent, opposite answers

Amazon’s ads business brought in $68.6 billion in 2025. In a court case against the AI company Perplexity, Amazon spelled out what its advertisers pay for: “Amazon’s advertisers pay for their ads to be shown to humans”.

On 8 September 2026, Meta launched Muse, a personal AI agent that does jobs for you, including shopping. Meta says that when it comes time to pay, “Muse can checkout” for you. By the night of Sunday 20 September, people trying to use Muse on Amazon were seeing Amazon’s “unauthorized AI agent” warning popup instead.

Then, on 21 September, Shopify went the other way. Its boss, Tobi Lütke, posted on X that Shopify was “partnering deeply with Muse”, so Muse can check out with Shop Pay, Shopify’s one-tap checkout, on every Shopify store.

One AI agent, two opposite answers: Amazon shut the door and Shopify opened it. Our read: the reason is what each one gets paid for.

WHAT EACH ONE GETS PAID FOR

Amazon took in $716.9 billion in 2025. It earns from its online stores, from the fees it charges the independent sellers on its site, such as commissions and delivery fees, from Prime and other subscriptions, and from AWS, its cloud computing business.

Then there are the adverts: $68.6 billion in 2025. Brands bid to have their products shown in your search results. Amazon’s yearly report says it gets paid “based on the number of clicks or impressions”. An impression is one view of an advert.

Think of Amazon as a giant supermarket. Brands pay to sit on the eye-level shelf, the one you see first. That only pays off if a person walks down the aisle and looks.

Shopify works differently. It gives shops the tools to run their own online store, and it takes a fee when they make a sale. In 2025, 76% of Shopify’s $11.6 billion revenue came from what it calls merchant solutions, mostly fees from Shopify Payments. On Shopify’s basic plan in the US, a shop pays from 2.9% plus 30 cents on each online card payment.

In supermarket terms, Shopify is the till. Which shelf you walked past makes no difference to the till. The till only cares that you paid.

WHY THEY CHOSE DIFFERENTLY

An AI agent is a very boring shopper. It has a list, it sticks to it, and it never gets tempted by a sale on garden furniture. It does the browsing for you, and you see only what it picks.

For Amazon, that is a problem. Those listings are the shelf money, and in Amazon’s own words, advertisers pay for “ads to be shown to humans”.

“Amazon’s advertisers pay for their ads to be shown to humans.”
Amazon, in its court case against Perplexity

Here is the part that tells you what Amazon really wants. Amazon builds AI shopping agents itself. Its own assistant is now called Alexa for Shopping. Amazon says shoppers can use it to “ask questions” and to “automate deal-finding, cart-building, and routine purchases”. Amazon tells advertisers they “can be part of the conversation through sponsored ads” in it, and their existing advert campaigns are “automatically eligible” to appear there. Amazon says shoppers who click a Sponsored Prompt buy 48% more often, and spend 21% more, than shoppers who don’t.

Our read: Amazon likes AI shopping agents when they are its own, with its shelf still inside, and Muse walks around the shelf.

Amazon’s boss, Andy Jassy, has said he expects Amazon to “work with other third-party agents over time“. He has also said what he thinks of them today: “The delivery estimates are frequently wrong. The prices are often wrong.”

For Shopify, the sums run the other way. An order an AI agent places through Shop Pay earns Shopify the same fee as any other online order. Shopify’s president, Harley Finkelstein, told investors in August that these orders carry “the exact economics as an online store transaction”, adding: “There’s no new fees.” More AI agent orders mean more money for Shopify. No wonder Shopify now lets its shops sell through ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Meta’s checkout. One more twist: Meta is itself a Shopify customer, named in Shopify’s own yearly report.

WHAT THEY SAY

Amazon’s stated reason is its rules. The popup read: “Continued access by an unauthorized AI agent violates Amazon’s Conditions of Use, to which our customers have agreed.” Since 30 May 2025, those rules have included “Agent Terms”, which say no AI agent may use Amazon “unless, at all times, it identifies itself”. Our read, in plain English: tell us you’re an AI agent, and ask first.

Amazon also told GeekWire that Muse does not identify itself while browsing, and appears to capture and store customer credentials, The Next Web reported. Meta says Muse “has no visibility into people’s passwords or payment methods”, and that any login a person shares goes “into secure storage, so Muse can use them without seeing them”. Our read: both can be true at once. The login is stored, and Meta says the AI can’t see it.

Amazon’s court fight with Perplexity, which also has a shopping agent, matters here. On 4 August 2026, a US appeals court cancelled an early court order Amazon had won against Perplexity. The judges said Amazon was unlikely to win its main claim, because “the user (not Perplexity) accessed Amazon using the Assistant as an AI tool”. The case goes on, and Amazon filed an amended complaint on 21 September.

Here’s our guess, and it is a guess: the rules are Amazon’s tool, and the advert money is what the tool protects.

WHERE YOU COULD GET STUNG

IF YOU SHOP WITH AN AI AGENT

Read the small print. Muse’s terms say you are “solely responsible” for the actions it takes, that you “bear all risk of financial loss”, and that some purchases “may be irreversible”. If something goes wrong, Meta’s liability is capped at $250 or the amount you paid Meta in the last 12 months, whichever is bigger.

There is a safety net if you pay with Stripe’s Link. Meta says Muse is the first AI agent covered by Link’s purchase protections, which pay up to $500 a claim for items that are damaged, lost or stolen.

Watch for paid influence. Meta says Muse shows no adverts today, Digiday reports. Amazon’s own assistant does show them. A UK government paper on AI agents and shoppers warns: “People may be steered towards products and services that are more profitable but less suited to their needs”.

IF YOU SELL ON SHOPIFY

Selling through Meta’s checkout is switched on by default for eligible Shopify stores, and Shopify says Shop Pay “can display as a wallet or checkout option for customers in Muse”. When someone buys through it, your Google Analytics and tracking pixels don’t fire, and you can’t ask the customer to sign in first. The order is still yours, so returns and customer service are still your job.

Shopify says there are no fees for selling through Meta’s checkout beyond normal payment processing. That could change. Mark Zuckerberg has said Meta eventually plans to charge a commission on sales made through Muse, CNN reported, and Digiday reports the merchant would pay it.

IF YOU SELL ON AMAZON

In Amazon’s own words, advertisers pay “for their ads to be shown to humans”. Our read: an AI agent that does the browsing skips your advert too. The price of those adverts is also in court. On 31 August 2026, the US Federal Trade Commission and 22 states sued Amazon, alleging it secretly raised what brands and sellers paid to advertise. Amazon called the suit “misguided”.

WHAT DECIDES IT

Amazon’s advert money is real: $68.6 billion in 2025. The fixed thing that decides what happens next is already written down: Amazon’s Conditions of Use, and how the courts read them.

Guess one

Amazon wins in court and keeps every AI agent that doesn’t identify itself off its site, for as long as it likes. Amazon keeps all its shelf money. Every company that builds AI shopping agents loses.

Guess twoOur bet

Amazon opens a proper front door instead: AI agents welcome, so long as they identify themselves and behave. Amazon would still show those AI agents sponsored ads on the way through. Amazon keeps most of its shelf money. Companies that build AI agents get a way in.

Guess three

The courts side with the shopper, and AI agents simply go around Amazon, straight to stores that welcome them. Shopify wins twice: it keeps the till fee, and it gets the shoppers Amazon turned away.

Our bet: guess two. Amazon already runs sponsored ads inside its own AI agent, Jassy says he expects to work with outside agents, and the appeals court’s reading makes a total ban harder to hold.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU

IF YOU ARE BUILDING

The strongest business here is the front door that shops can choose to open to agents. Start with one job: let a customer give a named agent permission to buy from a merchant without handing over a password.

The paying customer is likely the merchant or commerce platform. Charge for safer access and completed checkouts. The number to watch is the share of authorised orders that finish without a person rescuing them.

Give merchants controls for which agents may enter, what data they may touch, which orders need a person to review, and how a dispute gets handed back to one. Give shoppers spend limits, approved shops, category blocks and a stop button.

Then add the trust features. The agent identifies itself. It shows why it picked an item. Paid placement is labelled. Every purchase has a clear receipt. Returns and refunds work without a detective hunt.

The trap is borrowed access. Assume a marketplace can change its rules and close the door. A business that depends on hidden browsing, stored passwords or people scrolling past adverts is exposed. Build around permission, proof and the ability to work across more than one shop.

IF YOU ARE BUYING

For a shopper, the promise is fewer tabs, repeated forms and password resets. The trade is handing more of the choice to software.

Before you give it that power, check four things. Who is paying it? Why did it choose this product? Where are your login and payment details kept? How do you stop or undo a purchase?

The useful features are simple: a price limit, approved shops, a final check for unusual orders, a visible label on sponsored results, and one place to see every action the agent took. Convenience is valuable. Hidden incentives and missing receipts are expensive.

A useful shopping agent should be easy to stop, easy to question and easy to reverse. If it cannot show who asked, why it chose, who paid and how to undo the purchase, the business is built on borrowed trust.

Our call.

By 30 June 2027, Amazon opens an authorised route for shopping agents, and that route still shows them sponsored listings.

How sure we are? 70%

Due: 30 June 2027

On the day, we mark it held, broke or unclear. Misses go up as big as hits.

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_Sources

_{Every fact in this piece was checked against its source before it went out. Made in public: corrections are welcome in the Substack comments.}

makeyourmind/up: follow.the.money