Amazon is blocking Meta Platforms' Muse AI shopping agent from buying products on its own site, even as the agent's user base grows faster than ChatGPT's did in its early days. Motley Fool analyst Marc Guberti argues the standoff hands an advantage to Shopify, PayPal and Nebius, three companies tied to Muse's growth outside Amazon's marketplace.
Amazon has confirmed it is blocking Muse from purchasing items on its platform, pushing shoppers who use the agent toward other retailers instead. Amazon would rather build its own suite of AI agents than hand traffic to a rival's. That leaves Shopify, PayPal and Nebius positioned to capture the business Amazon turns away.
Shopify captures the Muse traffic
Shopify partnered with Meta Platforms so Muse can browse Shopify stores and complete purchases for shoppers. According to Mark Zuckerberg: "Shoppers find more. Shops sell more." Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said the company is using AI to expand what merchants can do, adding that no other platform comes close.
The partnership arrives on top of strong underlying numbers. Shopify posted 34% year-over-year revenue growth in the second quarter. Gross merchandise volume also jumped more than 30% over the same period. Shopify's tie-up with Meta could also draw more merchants onto its platform, and switching costs then make them likely to stay.
PayPal picks up a payment role
Meta named PayPal as one of the payment options for Muse orders, so higher e-commerce activity through the agent should translate into more PayPal transactions. PayPal's own growth is milder: it reported 5% year-over-year revenue growth in the second quarter, and net profit margins have been dipping, though they remain above 10%.
Still, PayPal is a mature fintech name that leans on buybacks. It carries a dividend yielding above 1% and trades at a low P/E ratio of 10. That setup means its revenue growth would not need to accelerate by much to spark a rally, and Muse's payment role gives it one more avenue for transaction volume.
Nebius sits at the center of the compute race
If Muse becomes the dominant AI agent, Amazon could lose meaningful shopping traffic, so hyperscalers are racing to build the compute agentic AI needs. Nebius supplies that compute, running data centers for both Microsoft and Meta Platforms as long-term customers.
Nebius was signing deals at $12 million per year for a single megawatt at the start of 2026. It is now securing short-term deals at more than $40 million per year per megawatt. The company has a projected 5-gigawatt pipeline by year-end. It already delivered 454% year-over-year revenue growth in the second quarter, and as more data centers come online, its revenue and margins should keep expanding alongside the agentic AI battle between Meta and Amazon.
Source: The Motley Fool
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