Agents Do the Buying
Best of
@favoritetakes
+0.9%
since Sep 28
The idea
I believe agents are about to do more of our buying, and the destination platforms that relied on being where we shop will lose ground. So this take skips picking that winner and instead owns the layers that get paid regardless: payment rails, the logistics that still move every box, the AI platforms running the agents, and the checkout and catalog plumbing merchants need to be bought through. It leans on steady anchors for most of the weight, with smaller stakes in higher-conviction names, and keeps a small cash reserve to add if the theme sells off.
What it owns
- Regardless of which agent completes a purchase or where the order originates, money still has to move, and these companies operate the networks and protocols that settle agent-driven transactions. · Visa Inc.If agents handle more purchases, the payments still settle on its card rails, and it remains the default way money moves online for that traffic., Mastercard IncorporatedIt built Agent Pay, a standard protocol that lets AI agents transact on a user's behalf using their card, positioning it to capture payment volume from agent-driven checkout flows., PayPal HoldingsIt is a wallet agents can check out with across millions of merchants, so it profits when it lands inside agent flows instead of getting skipped., Klarna GroupIt pushed early into AI shopping assistants and wires buy-now-pay-later financing directly into agent checkouts instead of leaving it on the store page., Circle Internet GroupIt issues USDC, a programmable dollar agents can send without intermediaries, so it benefits if agent commerce settles using stablecoins instead of traditional cards., Coinbase GlobalIf agents transact machine-to-machine, stablecoins are a natural payment method, and it runs the exchange and infrastructure most agent crypto payments would flow through.26%
- As shopping moves from storefronts into AI assistants, the companies that build and own those assistants capture the traffic and transactions that would otherwise go to destination sites. · Microsoft CorporationIt owns a major stake in OpenAI and its ChatGPT protocol with Stripe anchors one of the two checkout standards for agent purchases, positioning it on the agent side rather than the storefront side., Alphabet Inc.Its Gemini agent can complete purchases for users through Shopify's protocol, turning search from a traffic source that sends users to competitors into a direct buying assistant., NVIDIA CorporationEvery shopping agent, built by any company, runs on its chips, so it wins as long as agent usage keeps driving demand for AI compute., Meta PlatformsIts assistant lives inside apps where billions already chat, a natural place for an agent to complete a purchase mid-conversation with users.24%
- An agent can place an order with any merchant, but the physical package still requires the same warehousing, handling and last-mile delivery it always has. · United Parcel ServiceIt moves packages whether a purchase starts on a storefront or inside an agent, so it profits as long as total online buying keeps growing., FedEx CorporationPackages still need to reach doors regardless of which merchant the agent chose or where the order began, so it gets paid on every agent-driven shipment., PrologisIt owns more logistics real estate than anyone, so it benefits from any growth in e-commerce volume, however the orders are placed., GXO LogisticsIf buying shifts away from Amazon toward independent merchants, those merchants need outsourced fulfillment, and it is the largest pure-play outsourced warehouse operator., Symbotic Inc.It sells the warehouse robots that let merchants keep pace when AI agents are placing orders, so it benefits if retailers keep spending on automation to handle agent-driven volume.22%
- When customers stop visiting storefronts and instead use agents to find and buy products, merchants need technology that makes their catalogs and checkouts work inside those agents. · Shopify Inc.It wired its merchants directly into both Google's Gemini and ChatGPT, so if destination traffic fades, its sellers still get discovered by agents instead., Salesforce Inc.It sells Agentforce, the platform merchants use to build their own AI agents that can meet buying agents on the other side of the transaction., Cloudflare Inc.If machines do the shopping, merchants need to distinguish legitimate buying agents from bots and scrapers, and it is building the verification layer for that traffic., Etsy Inc.Its sellers were among the first to appear inside ChatGPT, so they get discovered by agents even as users stop visiting destination sites directly.18%
- Cash10%