TLDR
- Apple (AAPL) stock fell 2% to $332.22 on Tuesday after Bank of America flagged risks from AI agents.
- BofA analyst Wamsi Mohan says Meta’s new Muse app threatens Apple’s grip on mobile commerce and services revenue.
- Muse launched September 8 and hit 2.5 million downloads in two weeks, topping the US iOS free-app chart.
- Shopify, Expedia, and PayPal have all connected their platforms to Muse, while Amazon has blocked it.
- Mohan kept his Buy rating on Apple with a $370 price target, citing its loyal user base and privacy approach.
Apple stock dropped 2% on Tuesday, closing at $332.22, after a Bank of America note warned that AI agents could chip away at the company’s most profitable business lines.
The stock is still up 22% for the year. But BofA analyst Wamsi Mohan says a new kind of competitor is emerging, one that doesn’t need an iPhone at all.
That competitor is Meta’s Muse. The agentic AI app launched on September 8 and racked up 2.5 million downloads in its first two weeks.
Muse quickly rose to the top of the US iOS free-app chart. It can book travel, make purchases, and complete tasks from a single prompt, without the user ever opening a separate app.
Mohan says this matters because of where the money sits. Whoever controls the agent controls the transaction, and that’s a shift away from the operating system.
“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 wrote.
Muse’s Growing List of Commerce Partners
Muse isn’t just a chatbot. It can open a browser, fill out forms, and keep working in the background after a user closes the app.
Several major platforms have already opened their doors to it. Shopify gave Muse access to its full catalogue and Shop Pay system, while Expedia and PayPal signed on for bookings and payments.
Amazon is the outlier here. It has blocked Muse outright, a move BofA sees as reinforcing just how real this threat is to everyone else.
Apple has not been standing still. Its rebuilt Siri shipped with iOS 27 on September 14, just six days after Muse launched, using custom Google Gemini models under the hood.
Where Apple Still Falls Short
Even with the update, Mohan says Siri lacks persistent background tasks and a payment system that can match Muse’s reach. He notes the iPhone’s hardware isn’t the bottleneck, since it easily clears the specs Muse needs to run.
The real issue is speed. Apple ships major software updates once a year, while rival agents get better on a near-daily basis.
“Agents are accelerating innovation cycles, and Apple needs to ensure that its teams around services, silicon, payments, privacy etc. are integrating with Siri AI and moving at a pace to match innovation at competitors,” Mohan wrote.
Despite the warning, BofA kept its Buy rating on Apple and a $370 price target. Mohan points to Apple’s large, loyal user base and its privacy-first setup as real advantages that Meta doesn’t have.
Wall Street will now be watching whether Shopify, Expedia, and PayPal start reporting real transaction volume through Muse. That data would show whether Apple is actually losing ground, or just facing noise.
Adding to the pressure, OpenAI is expected to launch its own consumer AI agent the same day this report came out.
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