Agents Kill the Attention Toll
Philipp Hartmann@hartmann_p
+5.7%
since Sep 30
The idea
I think AI agents are about to gut attention-driven revenue (ads, upsells, feeds) while businesses that actually fulfill transactions win as friction disappears. So this leans into fulfillers with live agent-checkout ties, the payment rails every agent purchase still clears through, agent owners where transactions matter more than ads, and storefront software that makes merchants readable to agents. It is concentrated on purpose, holds about a tenth in cash for dips, and is built to play out over two to three years.
What it owns
- Companies that physically deliver the ride, the meal, or the stay earn more orders when an agent removes every step of the asking. · DoorDashIt fulfills dinner orders and already has live agent-checkout integrations, so it collects from delivery volume rather than attention., Uber TechnologiesIt earns from rides completed, not from attention captured, and stands to process more bookings if agents can reserve cars before requests are made., Booking HoldingsIt makes money when a trip gets booked, so an agent that plans and buys travel end to end feeds it volume instead of cutting it out., AirbnbIts revenue is the stay itself, not ads or upsells, and it gains if agents can search and book its listings directly., Instacart (Maplebear)It already lets people order groceries through ChatGPT, and the take holds as long as its transaction revenue outgrows its advertising business., Expedia GroupIt earns from bookings agents complete rather than eyeballs on a search page, and it belongs as long as its inventory stays readable to agents., Grab HoldingsIt extends the fulfiller bet to Southeast Asia with rides, food, and payments, all transaction revenue, in a region the US platforms do not own.36%
- Every agent purchase still clears through the same card networks and checkout processors, so they earn a cut of the volume no matter which agent wins. · VisaEvery agent purchase clears through payment rails, and it collects on the transaction no matter which agent or storefront wins., MastercardIt builds the standards for agents to pay on its network and gets paid per transaction as agent volume grows., PayPalIt is the checkout wallet showing up inside agentic flows, earning per transaction with no attention business to lose., Affirm HoldingsIt sits inside the checkout offering financing when an agent completes a purchase, so its per-purchase economics rise as transaction counts rise.21%
- Platforms building the assistants decide where purchases get routed, and their transaction sides outweigh their ad sides. · MicrosoftIt owns agents through Copilot and OpenAI, with revenue overwhelmingly from software and cloud, not ads, so it clears the test of transaction over attention., AmazonIts core is fulfilling orders through warehouses and delivery, which agents cannot cut out, and that side outweighs its advertising business., AppleIt puts an agent in every pocket and gets paid on hardware and services, not on holding attention for ads, so it takes a cut of the routing.19%
- Merchants and software with machine-readable catalogs and agent checkout built in get found first when software does the shopping. · ShopifyIt makes merchants readable to agents and earns a slice of each sale those storefronts process regardless of which agent placed the order., EtsyIts catalog is already buyable by an agent through Instant Checkout, and it earns per sale without an ad business to weigh against it., ToastIt powers the ordering and payment flow inside restaurants, so agent-placed orders run directly through its platform with revenue tied to each transaction., CloudflareIt sits in front of a huge share of the web and builds tools that decide which agents get through to merchants, so the gatekeeper gets paid.14%
- Cash10%