In a new investor note issued today, Bank of America says Meta’s new Muse AI agent highlights how third-party AI agents could increasingly bypass Apple’s ecosystem and threaten its services revenue. Here are the details.
BofA maintains “Buy” rating
Apple’s shares dropped more than 2.5% today, after Bank of America’s Wamsi Mohan issued an investor note warning that AI agents such as Meta’s Muse could increasingly capture product discovery, referrals, and transactions that currently take place through Apple’s ecosystem.
“The risk for Apple is that it can keep every handset sale and still lose discovery, referral, and transaction initiation.”
Mohan’s note comes as Meta’s Muse nears two weeks at No. 1 on the US App Store’s free apps chart. According to Sensor Tower estimates cited by TechCrunch, Muse has amassed more than 3.4 million downloads as of last week.
Meta’s OpenClaw-like AI agent can browse the web, fill out forms, book trips, send emails, and make purchases on a user’s behalf, and it seems to have caught on with the general public, as it took just 10 days to overtake ChatGPT at the top of the US App Store.
Back to Mohan’s note, he maintained a “Buy” rating and $370 price target on Apple, arguing that despite the new risks posed by AI agents, he still sees the company as an “eventual winner of AI at the edge.”
“Whomever the agent chooses becomes the merchant, and whoever owns the agent collects the routing economics that previously accrued to operating systems, search, and app stores.”
Mohan also points to Muse’s growing list of commerce integrations, including Shopify and Shop Pay, Expedia, and PayPal, as examples of how AI agents can increasingly handle transactions from discovery through checkout.
Additionally, Mohan notes that modern iPhones already have more than enough computing power to run AI agents, making software execution and integration the bigger challenge for Apple.
In his note, Mohan argues that Apple needs its Services, silicon, payments, privacy, and Siri AI teams to move together more quickly if the company wants to compete for what he calls the “economics of user intent.”
Specifically on Siri AI, he also noted that it lacks some of Muse’s capabilities, including persistent background tasks, broad third-party action support, and a dedicated agent payment rail.
He also pointed out the difference in development pace, with Apple typically shipping major software updates once a year, while AI agents can “improve daily.”
That said, Mohan sees Apple’s massive installed base and reputation for privacy as important advantages, particularly when it comes to convincing users to trust AI agents with sensitive tasks.
Have you been using AI agents such as Muse? let us know in the comments.
Worth checking out on Amazon
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