Musings About the Agentic Future

In this episode of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Tyler Crowe discuss:

Muse vs. Amazon.How will Muse make money?Shopify's bet.Expedia on Muse.Who wins in an agentic future?

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

This podcast was recorded on Sept. 23, 2026.

Travis Hoium: Is Muse going to break big tech? Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing starts now. Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

I'm Travis Hoium, I'm joined today by Lou Whiteman and Tyler Crowe, and guys, we've got to talk about Muse, probably the biggest new app introduction since ChatGPT. I don't think that's too overstating how impactful this has been Number 1 in all the app stores over the past nearly a week. Meta stock has exploded this week as a result, adding hundreds of billions of dollars in value.

But this is not disruptive to some companies. Not everybody loves the fact that everybody's downloading Muse and giving it a try. Amazon has blocked Muse from crawling its website, it doesn't seem like all these big tech companies are playing all that nicely.

But Lou, I wanted to start with is how is Muse changing the way that we're potentially interacting with some of these companies? Because we've been talking about aggregators and apps that we use all the time. All these big tech companies have been playing nice for a really long time.

Muse comes in, gains some popularity, and suddenly everybody goes, Whoa whoa, do we really want to change the status quo?

Lou Whiteman: The question of how things have changed, we will see, I think. I think it's way too early to say. But look, everybody played nice before because they were all chasing different things. Now they're beginning to chase the same thing. yeah, they're playing less nice. We are so early stages here, though. I don't know what we can really draw in about anything as far as what's going on, but definitely, look, Amazon loves being the biggest thing in e-commerce. If someone's going to come in and try to take some of what they're doing from them or take some of their secret sauce, they're going to push back because this is the first time they've had to.

Travis Hoium: Tyler, this does seem like an interesting place where there is now frenemies forming in this ecosystem where Muse can go out and shop every website, but now we're starting to get some of these sites blocked. Like Amazon, some are going, Hey, let's work together. PayPal, we'll talk about some of these partnerships in a moment, but Shopify, PayPal.

But do you think that something like, Muse will actually change the way that we shop? Because if it does, then that's a potential threat to Amazon who make actually more than 100% of its profit off of advertising. That's the thing that you open up Amazon today, search for anything, and you're going to see a whole bunch of ads.

That's the business model. The business model for Meta is ads on its social network. But if we're suddenly shopping for stuff with an AI assist, and it seems like both of those business models are potentially going to change.

Tyler Crowe: You probably brought two of the more cynical voices when it comes to the stuff onto the show today. It's a great choice on that. One of the things I'm thinking about this too is thinking about the business models is for Meta, it's not necessarily like, Oh, we're going to go change shopping.

At least the way that they have presented Muse so far to the public is, it seems more like a way of just capturing more information. You look at the way that they've done Metaglasses, and this has gone out. Muse itself is an extremely popular app.

But also, there is something to be said of the reason that it is so popular is because the token limits for free versus pay tiers, suggest that Meta's really just like, We want to almost give this thing away. I think that they're just saying 100 million tokens before you actually get into a pay tier, which I [inaudible].

Travis Hoium: I've heard people who use it constantly saying I have still not hit that limit.

Tyler Crowe: It's something like multiple novels worth of language texts that can be entered before you actually start hitting those limits. When you think of it that way, it's like, Well, it doesn't really seem like they're trying to push for pay tiers, they're trying to gather as much information as possible, and shopping is obviously part of that. One could argue that it's part of Meta's social media empire.

They don't get as much information on the shopping side, so that certainly gives them that aspect. Again, whether this is a game changer for Meta, I don't know. Maybe it just is supplementing the status quo of more information to sell more ideas.

But here's where I come back to it, because as you said, we're running into walled gardens. Amazon is like, No, we're not going to let Muse do this. I can imagine that Google or Alphabet would do the same for YouTube and Google because they have these walled gardens of advertising.

We don't want our competitors being able to scrape our information for this. This is ours and it makes our data more valuable when it's not democratized to the world. Then it starts to come to the user experience, where it's like, Well, I need an AI agent from Meta, I need an AI agent from Amazon.

Then all of a sudden I've got four or five different agents. Do I need to bundle my agents again? Man, that almost sounds like streaming services all over again.

Travis Hoium: That's probably a good analogy that this amazing technology, but the business model and how this is going to play out. The other thing, Lou, I think we need to think about as investors is we get really excited about the new thing, the popular thing. You can go back through the history of artificial intelligence and there was an image creation app that went $0-100 million in revenue in a matter of weeks, and now I can't even remember the name because it's completely irrelevant.

Even ChatGPT was supposed to disrupt Google's entire business search. Is there an endgame here that is something like Muse is going to fundamentally disrupt tech in the way that we interact with technology, or is this going to be much more of a slow burn, which is, I think, for Norman this the way that this has played out so far?

Lou Whiteman: We can get this more in a second. But it is a slow burn. Everything that we think we have declared the winner probably half a dozen times here.

It's always been different guys. I don't think we know anything. I tend to agree with Tyler on especially Meta.

I don't give the benefit of a doubt for data harvesting, but I do think that kinder view of what they're doing right now, giving away is the land and expand, just trying to get market share because it is so new. They can't get people to pay for it right now because nobody knows they want it yet, and we'll see if they really want it. But we are early days.

This is the new big thing because it is better today. That's not to say someone else won't come back with something else tomorrow. Where does it end?

The endgame is one of these things becomes so good that the Amazons of the world can't block. Because they're costing themselves business or there's just a dominant player that you have. The same way Apple got the Apple Tax with the App Store.

You just needed to be there. We're a long ways off from that. Anyone who tells you they know who the winner is is just trying to sell something.

Tyler Crowe: Travis, I almost want to offer a third option because you gave pivotal moment versus slow burn. It seems like we're having these game changing moments all the time these days, to the point where they're just commoditizing, the game changing aspect of it. Perhaps it's to this point where the speed at which it moves so fast, the rapid slide down cost commodity curve and the commoditization of this, that it is really hard to have a stand-out pivotal moment because it is moving so quickly.

Travis Hoium: It's really hard to see what is sustainable in this market, as well. I do want to talk about some companies that have a big opportunity ahead of them, including Shopify. We'll do that in a moment.

Travis Hoium: Welcome back to the show. We did have some interesting partnerships with Muse. Amazon, taking a little bit of an adversarial approach to Muse, but Shopify, PayPal, Expedia have said, Hey, if you want to use our products connect to us, we're more than happy to work with you.

Tyler, are these opportunities? We talked about some of the walled gardens, and I think that's an interesting way to frame this is Amazon is a walle garden. They want you to go to Amazon and shop there.

If you're going to a Shopify shop, they don't necessarily care whether you came from Muse, or you came from Facebook or you knew which website to go to. As long as you're coming to their site, that's a win for them. It almost seems like some of these business models are going to be very conducive to opening up and saying, Hey, Muse, ChatGPT, whatever Google comes out with, we're happy to be partners with you.

Tyler Crowe: There is a world in which some of this can pull some discretionary spend away from Amazon. If uptake of this is so popular and everyone decides to seed all of their life and shopping decisions to Muse or some other non-Amazon non-Alphabet, non-exclusive agent that would benefit a company like Shopify. That is to say, a Shopify or a PayPal or any of these aren't building their own products.

I don't know, maybe there was some, They tried to build their own, they saw it wasn't working. It's like, Maybe we just partner with somebody. Might be a heck of a lot easier to have some aggregator above us.

But at the same time, it's pretty a low-cost thing. All they have to do is sign on the dotted line with Muse and go, Hey we'll partner. The opportunity costs here seems pretty low.

I don't want to say it's like picking up a few dimes on the floor, but it does benefit, but I wouldn't necessarily call it like a game changer to the investment thesis in any of the companies mentioned.

Lou Whiteman: What Tyler says exactly right. This is not just unique here. Every one of these product launches, there's a whole page of partners and all that, and there is very little downside to these partners.

There's nothing to go in. It reminds me of how we were talking not too long ago about Joby and Archer and all of the companies that did refundable deposits for 1,000 aircraft. There's no downside to being there on Day 1.

The takeaway for investors is, be careful, don't read much into that. If Muse turns into something, it could turn into something. But in terms of guarantees or endorsements, what the revenue means, what it means for these businesses, how things evolve, it's not worth the paper it's printed on.

Travis Hoium: Meta's stock jumping 9%, maybe a bit of overreaction short-term. Lou, I did want to get your thoughts on some of these changing business models because as we think about some of the other companies in tech, and Expedia is one of the ones that was announced as a partner yesterday, Uber is always the one that I think about because it's a similar aggregator position. But thinking about Muse, if you're going to do travel search with Muse, sure you could go through Expedia.

But if Muse is a really smart AI, why can't it just go straight to the website, which is essentially what Expedia was doing, it was being a discovery engine for hotels for airlines, things like that. Is that a good way to think about that? That maybe they're coming at this from a point of weakness, where they just don't want to be out of the game at all, whereas Uber, I always think about, is this really just something that will be disruptive to Uber?

Those drivers still have to connect with somebody and have to work for some application that's going to connect them.

Are they going to connect directly to Muse? Probably not. Something like an Uber sitting in the middle, maybe it doesn't have the same aggregated position, but it is at least some valuable position that can't be just completely cut out by just going directly to a person's website saying where they are. Is that a good way to think about this competitive dynamic as we go down from who may see tailwinds from Muse short-term, but maybe isn't in a strong position long-term?

Lou Whiteman: I want to push back on everything you said because I doubt [OVERLAPPING]. Back to what you said about Meta, I actually think the 10% stock jump makes sense because the market is always price in the future. It didn't double.

It didn't say it's guaranteed, but if Muse is onto something, this is powerful. Seeing it come out and seeing the investors get excited about it, again, it's not for today. It's not something I'm chasing, but that makes sense.

I also don't really see a difference between Expedia and Uber, long-term in this. I think that the promise of these agents is more direct commerce and destroying the middleman. Yes, for now, Uber is better protected because the airline websites are set up, but there is no reason why a driver wouldn't be incented to come up with a new system where they're available to some smart agent if it means that you don't have to pay Uber their fee.

Long-term, I would be very careful assuming one middleman makes it and another doesn't because the whole point of this is to relieve the friction, get rid of the middleman.

Travis Hoium: When we come back, we're going to talk about where there's potential hidden opportunities in this agentic future. You're listening to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing.

Travis Hoium: Welcome back to the show. Tyler, where are there some hidden gems here? Meta is one of the biggest companies in the world, almost a $2 trillion valuation. Is that still a underappreciated gem or are there other areas that you're looking, if Muse and shopping agents are going to be successful?

Tyler Crowe: As I'm thinking about agentic AI, I actually have more doubts about it from an individual consumer level because it will help in some ways, but I think that it doesn't have as much power with discretionary spending because people tend to buy things on a whim and some even think of the most basic things of a TJ Maxx or Ross stores where the actual in-person experience is still like a thing as ancient as that may sound.

Travis Hoium: I thought we were going to have so much extra time for those in-person things now that agents are doing all of our work for us, but maybe not.

Tyler Crowe: One should hope so. But, I actually think there's going to be a little bit more opportunity in this agent to commerce on the B2B side rather than from the individual consumer perspective. It just seems like a more appropriate outlet for this.

Purchases are made on regular schedules where inventories are closely monitored and often digitized. All that data is there versus somebody on a consumer level just like, it pops in my head one day, Hey, I want to go to the movies or something like that. It just seems like that automation, regular cadence, it would take stuff off of someone's plate at a business.

Those are the things where it's going to make a real difference. Now, we talked about big agentic AIs, but I think there's actually more value in some of these real niche products that not necessarily these big companies are thinking about. I want to bring one company to the table here.

It's within the Hidden Gem services. It's called AAR Corp. This is really deep in the playbook here.

It's a parts distribution and enterprise resource planning software company for commercial aircraft and military aircraft. That's like an apples-to-apples for Hidden Gems, don't you think?

Tyler Crowe: What they're building right now is actually agentic AI capabilities into their ERP Systems that are going to take away a lot of the inventory planning for its commercial airline customers. Say Delta is like, Hey, we need some, instead of routinely scheduling actuators for its landing gear, their AI ERP software is going to handle it. It's built on AAR system who also happens to distribute those parts, bing, bang, boom.

It's saved a lot of people headaches. It's also starting to predict those things knowing the schedules on which these things break. I think things like that are going to make those companies immensely valuable to their customers, versus this absolute knife fight that we're going to have with the Muse agentic AI companies and the Alphabet agentic AI trying to take every last shred of our data to try to figure out what we want when half the time we don't even know what we want.

I really do think it's going to be these niche companies working in very esoteric areas that could generate immense value from this agentic commerce revolution.

Lou Whiteman: On the consumer side, it is fun to think about. That LG introduced the smart refrigerator in June of 20,2000, guys2.

Lou Whiteman: 26 years ago. How many of us are letting our appliance handle our grocery list every week. Now, you could say, but Lou, now that the AI is here it can do that.

But that is, I think something to reflect on about consumer adaptation. The difference with B2B, as Tyler is noting is, there's more of a regular cadence. I don't want to eat the same meal every day, every week.

But an airplane needs this many parts. I do think it's more there. On the consumer side, this is somewhere between glorified search and an imaginary friend who makes decisions for you and pays for them without you knowing it.

I am probably more on the glorified search side, but I do think there is ways where this can become the new big thing, and it does eat into the search business the way we've all been talking about forever. It's going to take a lot of time. The only urgency is podcasts, analysts, media, stuff like this, saying, Is this the new big thing today?

The reality is, this is going to take a generation to play out, if not longer. I think there's a lot of opportunities.

Tyler Crowe: Do you know what's going to be one of the more fun stories to follow with individual agentic commercial AI? Is when AI has been thinking about your spending habits and how they can make you more efficient and maybe save money. There's just going to be a ton of local news stories of, somebody had a palette full of tuna cans sent to their house because their agent AI commerce thing said, You buy a lot of tuna. Let's save some money and buy it by the palette.

Travis Hoium: This such a dystopian future, Tyler. Lou, final words.

Tyler Crowe: The siliest dystopian future.

Travis Hoium: Exactly. Can Google fast follow what works? Because I think we mentioned this on one of the shows last week. I tried out Muse. The first thing I did was connect all of my Google stuff. Google also owns the operating system for more than half of the smartphones in the world. Is this an area where Muse is the thing of the day? It is very impressive. I'm not taking that away from Meta at all, but if Google does this okay enough, they can actually be a winner because the vast majority of people are not going to adopt this in the next two weeks. They're going to take the next two years, and by then, Google is going to be there and do it for you right on your phone.

Lou Whiteman: I have good news and bad news for the Alphabet bulls. Good news is, yes, they can copy this, and they can win because they already have the connections, definitely. The bad news is, is what Meta has shown us is almost anyone can copy this, and so it's quite possible someone other than Alphabet or Meta will simply do it better. Maybe Apple, I don't know. But, I don't think the only honest answer is, we do not know who's the winner will be in five years. We shouldn't read too much into today, and we shouldn't assume anything.

Travis Hoium: Definitely a lot for us to cover in the future. As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley Fool may have four more recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows The Motley Fool's editorial standards and is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. To see our full advertising disclosure, please check out our shows. Lou Whiteman, Tyler Crowe, and Dan Boyd behind the glass, I'm Travis Hoium. We'll see you here tomorrow.