🔥 Muse Isn’t Just an AI Assistant — It Wants a Cut

$Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$   just added an interesting twist to the AI race.

At Meta Connect, Zuckerberg said Muse could eventually make money by taking a small fee from transactions it completes for users. The exact fee hasn’t been disclosed yet. Muse is already being connected with services including Expedia, Instacart, Shopify and PayPal. 

And this is where it gets interesting for investors.

If I ask Muse to find me a flight, order groceries or buy something online, the traditional journey changes:

Search → website → browse → checkout

could become:

Ask Muse → Muse decides → Muse buys

That potentially puts Meta between the customer and the company making the sale.

Amazon is already pushing back. It has blocked Muse from shopping on its platform, saying third-party applications should respect the decisions of service providers. 

Meanwhile, Expedia and Instacart are going the other direction and integrating with Muse. 

So the bigger question isn’t really “Is Muse another AI chatbot?”

It’s “Who owns the checkout screen in an AI-first world?”

If consumers increasingly tell an agent what they want instead of searching themselves, the valuable real estate could move from Google search pages and retailer websites to the AI agent making the decision.

That could create a very different competitive landscape for META, $Amazon.com(AMZN)$  , $Alphabet(GOOGL)$  , $Expedia(EXPE)$  and others.

Personally, I think the most interesting part is still early: will consumers actually trust an AI agent enough to let it make purchases regularly?

If they do, the transaction fee could become a much bigger story than it looks today.