Meta (META.US) Muse set off a “AI disruptive transaction” and a collective decline in finance, insurance, and travel stocks

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Muse, a new personal AI agent launched by Meta Platforms (META.US), is triggering a new “AI disruptive deal” on Wall Street. On Tuesday, the stock prices of major US banks, insurance companies, and online travel platforms generally fell, and investors began to worry. As AI agents can actively compare prices, book services, and even handle customer service matters for consumers, companies that have long benefited from consumers “unwilling to compare prices or change service providers” may be under pressure.

Affected by this, the S&P 500 financial index fell nearly 2% on Tuesday, closing at its lowest level since July, while the S&P 500 index remained basically flat. In terms of individual stocks, J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM.US) and Wells Fargo Bank (WFC.US) both fell more than 3%; Morgan Stanley (MS.US) fell 2.88%; insurance company ALL.US (ALL.US) fell by 5.5%, and Schw.US (SCHW.US) fell more than 6%.

This round of sell-off is not limited to the financial sector. Online travel platform Booking Holdings (BKNG.US) fell 2.55% on Tuesday; fitness chain Planet Fitness (PLNT.US) plummeted 9.5%. In the European market, the telecom sector became the worst performing industry in the Stoke Europe 600 Index. France's Orange and British Telecom Group BT Group both fell by about 4%.

Market concerns about these companies are heating up, coinciding with Meta's Muse rapidly becoming popular. Muse recently topped the Apple US App Store rankings. It can complete a series of digital tasks on behalf of users by connecting to third-party services such as Gmail and OpenTable.

The rapid rise of Muse also boosted Meta's stock price by 11% on Monday. Compared with traditional chatbots, an important change in AI agents is that they can not only answer user questions, but also “perform tasks” for users. This means that future consumers may directly let AI find the cheapest insurance, compare different telecom packages, book hotel tickets, and even handle complex customer service communications.

Goldman Sachs's trading department pointed out in the report that as AI assistants such as Muse and Instinct continue to increase their capabilities in the fields of price comparison, travel reservations, and customer service interaction, industries that rely on regular billing, bargaining mechanisms, and additional fees to obtain revenue may face increasing pressure.

Rhys Williams, chief strategist at Wayve Capital Management, said that Muse “undoubtedly has a negative impact on such companies.” Although AI agents are more of a novelty at this stage, he anticipates that AI agents may become quite common in two years.

Goldman Sachs believes that if AI agents make it easier and cheaper for consumers to switch service providers, telecommunications, insurance, and utilities will be a few industries worth paying particular attention to.

Goldman Sachs's “consumer inertia” stock portfolio potentially affected by AI covers multiple industries, including telecom operators AT&T (T.US) and T-Mobile US (TMUS.US), insurance companies Allstate and Advance Insurance (PGR.US), streaming companies NFLX.US (NFLX.US) and Paramount Skydance (PSKY.US), and online travel platforms Expedia (EXPE.US) and Booking Holdings. This stock portfolio fell 2.6% on Tuesday, the biggest one-day decline since February. The cumulative decline over the past six trading days has exceeded 7%.

What the market is really worried about is not that AI will simply replace an application, but that AI agents may change the way consumers make purchasing decisions. In the past, many business models actually benefited from “frictional costs” in the transaction process. For example, consumers may choose to automatically renew their insurance because it is too cumbersome to re-compare insurance prices, continue to pay for existing packages due to complicated procedures for changing telecom carriers, or habitually use the same travel website to book hotels and air tickets. However, if AI agents can automatically complete operations such as price comparison, negotiation, cancellation of services, and supplier changes, the consumer's inertia to maintain the original service may be weakened.

Citrini Research believes that with the spread of AI intelligence for consumers, the market may begin to re-examine companies that have benefited from “transaction friction” for a long time. Some business strategies that worked in the past, which relied on consumer behavior habits, may gradually lose their effectiveness in the age of AI agents. The agency pointed out that consumer-grade AI agents have actually been around for a while, but Muse may be an important turning point, “not necessarily because of its technical capabilities, but because of its reach.”

At the same time, the changes brought about by AI agents do not mean that the transaction activity itself has disappeared, but may mean a shift in the Internet transaction portal. Bloomberg industry research analysts Mandeep Singh and William Tong pointed out that personal AI agents may allow some consumers to bypass mature internet platforms such as UBER.US (UBER.US). Muse and Instinct may play a role similar to “toll booths” for internet transactions in the future, earning revenue from transactions completed through AI applications.

In other words, if consumers stop actively opening multiple apps to find products and services in the future, but instead directly tell AI to “help me find the cheapest insurance,” “book a restaurant with a location tonight,” or “find the most cost-effective hotel,” then platforms that master the AI smart portal may gain stronger transaction distribution capabilities.

This also explains why Muse's recent popularity has on the one hand pushed Meta to gain market popularity, but on the other hand, it has put pressure on various industries such as finance, insurance, telecommunications, and travel.

Tuesday's market trend also reminded investors of a sell-off in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) sector experienced earlier this year. At the time, Anthropic launched AI intelligence tools such as Claude Cowork, which raised market concerns that traditional software business models might be impacted.

Today, similar transaction logic is beginning to spread from enterprise software to the consumer sector. Unlike previous discussions on whether AI can improve corporate productivity, the new question brought about by Muse is that if AI can directly make choices and execute transactions for consumers, which companies originally earned revenue from consumer habits, conversion costs, and asymmetric information may be affected?

Muse is still in the early stages of development, and its actual user retention, ability to complete tasks, and future scale of commercialization have yet to be verified. However, judging from the collective fluctuations in various sectors such as finance, insurance, tourism, and telecommunications on Tuesday, Wall Street has begun to try to re-evaluate the long-term impact that the popularity of AI smart devices may have on the consumer internet and traditional service industries.