Shares of major banks, insurers and online travel agencies slid as investors fear that tools like Meta Platforms Inc.’s personal AI agent could disrupt businesses that benefit from so-called consumer inertia, the tendency to keep buying something out of habit even when a better alternative exists.
The S&P 500 Financials Index shed nearly 2% Tuesday to close at the lowest level since July, trailing a broader market that was roughly flat. Companies that help users book travel accommodations were also hit, with Booking Holdings Inc. falling 2.6%. In Europe, telecommunications was the worst-performing sector.
The downturn came as Muse, Meta’s new AI agent, rose to the top of Apple Inc.’s US app store. The product can complete digital tasks on a user’s behalf by connecting to third-party services like Gmail and OpenTable.
As artificial intelligence assistants like Muse and Instinct improve at price comparison, trip booking and dealing with customer service interactions, industries that rely on recurring bills, negotiable pricing and add-ons could come under pressure, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s trading desk said in a note.
Muse is “no doubt a negative for those kinds of companies,” said Rhys Williams, chief strategist at Wayve Capital Management. “Right now it’s more of a curiosity, but I think two years from now we’re all going to have agents.”
Goldman said telecoms, insurance and utilities are the industries to watch if AI agents make it easier and cheaper to switch service providers. Its basket of “consumer inertia” stocks at risk of disruption includes telecom carriers AT&T Inc. and T-Mobile US Inc., insurers Allstate Corp. and Progressive Corp., streaming service owners Netflix Inc. and Paramount Skydance Corp., and travel booking sites Expedia and Booking.
Personal AI agents also have the potential to shift customers away from established online platforms owned by the likes of Uber Technologies Inc., Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Mandeep Singh and William Tong said in a note. They see Muse and Instinct acting as “toll collectors,” generating revenues from transactions that go through AI apps.
The selloff on Tuesday was reminiscent of a meltdown in software-as-a-service firms earlier this year on the back of Anthropic PBC’s launch of agentic tools such as Claude Cowork.
Citrini Research, which published a bearish report in February that dragged down shares of delivery, payments and software companies, said on Monday night that consumers may start to probe businesses that benefit from transactional friction.
“Tomorrow, you might see something that makes you ask how much money health insurers make simply because people won’t sit on the phone for 5 hours trying to get coverage approved,” the firm wrote on X. “Tactics that worked when consumer behavior was dictated by human psychology will fall by the wayside.”
The firm also released a report on Tuesday focused on the impact of “agentic consumer adoption.”
“Consumer-facing agents have been kicking around for a while,” Citrini wrote, but Muse “seems like a watershed moment, not necessarily because of its technical abilities but because of its reach.”
Ren writes for Bloomberg.
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