In Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, the discussion about how AI will transform the business world has never stopped. But when theory becomes reality, the first to feel the chill may be the internet platform giants we are most familiar with.

Recently, on the well-known financial podcast "The Synopsis," host Drew had an in-depth conversation with senior independent stock analyst Mostly Borrowed Ideas (hereafter referred to as MBI), who has over 150,000 followers.

MBI recounted that about 10 days after Meta released Muse, he downloaded the app and began testing it. This test ultimately led him to make an investment decision—liquidating his heavily weighted Airbnb, Inc. (ABNB) position and further adding to his Meta holdings.

In this conversation, Drew and MBI also deeply analyzed how Meta's AI agent product Muse will disrupt the business models of internet aggregator platforms such as Airbnb, Inc. (ABNB), Booking, Uber, DoorDash, and Amazon.com (AMZN). A brand-new business era—"Proactive Commerce"—may be raising its curtain.

Left: Drew, Right: Mostly Borrowed Ideas

After Testing Muse, He Sold Off All His Airbnb Shares

As a heavy user of Airbnb, Inc. (ABNB) (having spent over $7,000 this year) and a heavily invested shareholder, MBI initially, like many people, dismissed the idea that AI would disrupt online travel agencies (OTAs). After all, people booking accommodations need to look at photos, read reviews, and even chat with hosts—traditional text-based AI (such as early ChatGPT) simply could not meet these needs.

But Muse changed his view.

MBI shared his experience: "I asked Muse to recommend 5 accommodations within a two-hour drive of my home, based on my past stays on Airbnb. Astonishingly, Muse not only automatically browsed my history, but even analyzed travel short videos (Reels) I had saved on Instagram, thereby precisely grasping my preferences. It browsed and filtered in the background like a real person, and finally presented me with options containing rich images and reasoning."

When MBI took interest in a farmhouse and asked if he could book it directly, Muse told him within a minute: yes, and by bypassing Airbnb and booking directly, the price would be 60% cheaper. Muse had even linked a credit card, requiring only a single click from MBI to complete the payment.

"At that moment I realized that Airbnb might be standing on the opposite side of the future trend," MBI admitted.

Host Drew raised a defensive challenge based on the traditional business perspective: "Airbnb's biggest moat is 'trust' and 'exclusive supply.' As a consumer, I dare not transact directly with strangers on the internet; I need Airbnb as an intermediary to guarantee refunds and after-sales service. At the same time, many hosts do not have their own independent websites."

MBI countered: AI agents can fully establish a "trust" assessment by scraping genuine reviews from across the web. More importantly, in the AI era, a host only needs to say to the AI, "Help me simultaneously list this property on Booking and VRBO and manage the calendar," and the so-called "exclusive supply" barrier would instantly collapse. Because hosts have long suffered under the "hegemony" of a single platform—it was just that the friction cost of multi-platform management was too high before, and AI has eliminated that friction.

Airbnb vs Booking: Which Has Greater Resilience?

After MBI shared his experience of selling Airbnb, the two then turned their attention to another OTA giant: Booking.

The Curse of Direct Traffic: Airbnb currently has as much as 90% of its traffic coming from "organic/direct traffic," which is also the reason for its high profit margins. But in the AI agent era, consumers may no longer directly open the Airbnb app, instead using AI to coordinate their itineraries. MBI predicts that within the next 5-10 years, Airbnb's direct traffic will decline significantly.

Shift in Customer Acquisition Costs: Booking currently has one-third of its traffic that must be purchased from Google (with an annual marketing budget exceeding $5 billion). For Booking, the traffic gateway shifting from Google to AI (such as Muse, ChatGPT) may just mean paying a "toll" in a different place, and customer acquisition costs (CAC) may even decline.

Valuation Protection: Booking's current valuation is only 10-11 times EBITDA, essentially being valued by the market as a "traditional pipeline"; while Airbnb's valuation is as high as 30 times. If both eventually become underlying infrastructure for AI, the valuation de-rating Airbnb faces will be far more brutal.

Host Drew added another defensive advantage for Booking—its loyalty program: "Booking has more than half of its room nights coming from its loyalty members. Loyalty programs offer points and free upgrades, which will encourage consumers to still choose Booking to complete transactions even when AI compares prices."

But the two reached a consensus: AI will absolutely not make these OTA platforms "better." In the best case, they merely barely maintain the status quo; in the most likely scenario, their long-term compound earnings growth rates will be compressed by AI.

Disrupting Amazon: When AI Takes Over Your "Shopping Cart"

If the travel industry, with its low frequency and high ticket prices, is the first to be hit, what about high-frequency e-commerce and local services?

Take Amazon.com (AMZN) as an example. MBI pointed out that Amazon's biggest crisis is its advertising business worth up to $76 billion. "In the past, when we opened Amazon, we would often mindlessly buy the top three items in search results—that is the logic behind how bidding ads make money. But AI agents will not click on ads. If you give AI the instruction 'quality first, price first among equal quality, logistics speed last,' AI will absolutely rationally find the optimal solution across the entire web for you."

MBI gave an example: he saw a T-shirt in a Meta ad and asked Muse to evaluate whether he should buy it. Muse not only refrained from "protecting its own" by recommending the product from its own ad, but instead told him that this brand was not cost-effective and recommended better alternatives.

Host Drew agreed and offered Amazon's path to breaking through: "Amazon's current app experience is actually quite poor; only the 'search-buy' function works smoothly. They must immediately deeply embed native AI capabilities into their own app to defend the 'user interface' (UI). As long as users are still accustomed to opening Amazon first when they have a shopping need, and Amazon's AI is good enough, combined with its powerful logistics fulfillment network, it can defend its base."

Why Local Services (Uber and DoorDash) Are Temporarily Safe

Compared to OTAs and e-commerce, both Drew and MBI believe that DoorDash (food delivery) and Uber (ride-hailing) will be impacted somewhat later.

MBI analyzed: "These two belong to high-frequency, low-ticket impulse consumption. When ordering food delivery, users often do not know what they want to eat and need to 'browse.' More importantly, food delivery is a three-sided network (platform, merchant, rider); AI can replace the platform to place orders with restaurants, but it cannot replace riders to deliver food to the door. Currently DoorDash's profit per order is only 50 cents, indicating they are not extracting excessive profits, which ironically becomes a moat."

Host Drew believes ride-hailing (Uber) carries greater risk than food delivery: "With food delivery, if something goes wrong, users need customer service for refunds—the platform's value in after-sales service is significant. But ride-hailing is different. In the future, with the entry of autonomous vehicles (AV) from Waymo, Tesla, and others, plus AI agents instantly comparing prices across all platforms (Uber, Lyft, Waymo), users' loyalty to Uber will be almost zero, and the price war in the ride-hailing market will be extremely brutal."

Embracing the Era of "Proactive Commerce"?

At the end of the program, the two experts jointly introduced a new concept that will define business in the future—"Proactive Commerce."

Traditional commerce is divided into two categories: one is "intent-driven" (such as going to Amazon to search for and buy a book), and the other is "discovery-driven" (such as scrolling through Instagram, seeing an ad, and developing a desire to purchase).

AI agents will bring a third model. MBI painted a scenario that is chilling to think about: "Airbnb now offers a 'book now, pay later' feature (book in advance, payment deducted 7 days before check-in). In the future, AI agents like Muse will read your email, discover that you have booked a hotel but have not yet paid, and it will proactively pop up and tell you: 'Hey, I just found that the hotel you booked—if you go to its official website and order directly now, it would be 20% cheaper. Would you like me to cancel Airbnb and rebook it for you?'"

Without the user issuing any command, AI tirelessly works in the background 24/7 to find better solutions for you and proactively suggest replacements.

In this new era, the business logic of platforms that rely solely on information asymmetry and traffic monopoly to charge high "tolls" is being uprooted entirely. For investors, it is also time to re-examine the "platform-type" stocks in your portfolio: in tomorrow's world where AI has autonomous agency, are they indispensable infrastructure, or expensive intermediaries about to be bypassed?