Who in Big Tech Is Ready for Agentic AI?

In this podcast, Motley Fool contributors Travis Hoium, Lou Whiteman, and Rachel Warren discuss: Amazon goes after Perplexity's agents. Meta's scattered AI strategy. Oracle's earnings.

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This podcast was recorded on March 11, 2026. Travis Hoium: It's Wednesday, so there must be big AI news in the market. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

Welcome to Motley Fool Money with the Hidden Gems team. I'm Travis Hoium joined today by Lou Whiteman and Rachel Warren. Every tech company that we know is building an AI story.

That's been something that's been happening for quite a while now. But this week, Amazon actually won a court ruling against Perplexity saying that they can't scrape their website. The interesting thing here is that you could make an argument that Google and Meta just want to connect companies, consumers with retailers who are trying to sell them products, but Amazon is a little bit different.

I thought it was worthwhile to dig into how there's such a different player in the AI space today. Rachel, they want people to go to amazon.com. They have been the one company that's really been resistant to all these AI companies the way that they would look at it is scraping their data and getting into their system for free.

The big thing is, they generate a ton of money. I think it's over $40 billion now from advertising revenue. Guess what?

AI chatbots, don't look at ads. Is this a threat to Amazon? Is this just Amazon trying to play its cards as well as it can?

What's going on with Amazon shoving Perplexity to the side? Rachel Warren: I think if you look at this court victory, it's obviously a win for the business in the short term, but I do think it highlights a deeper risk for the business, and I say this is an Amazon, long-term shareholder. But I think you should think about it this way.

Amazon's entire flywheel is built on a very specific competitive advantage. They own the entire commerce journey from that very first search that a shopper might make all the way to the package being delivered to your door. They don't just want a sale.

As you noted, they want the advertising revenue from the sponsored products that you scroll past as a shopper and the data from every click. By blocking Perplexity from scraping their site, Amazon is essentially trying to protect that storefront experience that makes their ecosystem so profitable. I think the threat here is that AI agents, which we are seeing become smarter and faster and launched left and right.

These are Ilas shoppers, so to speak. They're not going to be distracted by the deals that a human shopper would be. They're not going to go and browse through pages and pages of sponsored results, which are actions, by the way, that fuel Amazon's advertising machine.

If we live in a world where third party AI becomes the primary shopping interface, there is this concern that that really extensive advertising mode for Amazon could start to dry up. I think that's the extreme bear case. I don't think we're there, but I do think it's clear that Amazon is really fighting to ensure that in a world that could be transitioning to more AI-driven shopping, that shoppers are using their own AI assistant like Rufus, rather than a neutral third party that might suggest a competitor.

I think this court win buys them some time as they are trying to find out where they fit into a potential AI-powered shopping future. But I do think that the battle for who owns the customer's intent and where those AI agents fit in, I think that's just getting started. Travis Hoium: Lou, is that right?

Is this a threat we need to watch with Amazon's retail business? Lou Whiteman: Stepping out broader, I think instant and complete comparison shopping could be the killer app for consumers. Travis Hoium: What you mean by that is instead of going to 15 different websites.

Lou Whiteman: Or even Google Shopping tried this with search, and it wasn't as good. But if you could just tell your little imaginary friend. I want to buy this, go find me the best price.

That's a real killer app. I can see why retailers would see this as a threat. I think what Rachel said is right.

At best, Amazon wants to be proactive and retain as much control for as long as they can. It's funny. Looking at it from the AI perspective, there's a weird chicken or the egg thing.

The AI models want consumers to pay for them. They need killer as. But until the AI models are big enough to force the issue, why would retailers like Amazon give in to Perplexity here?

Without the killer app, how do you get the volumes that you need to then get the killer app? I don't know. It's funny to think, who ends up paying here long term?

Say the future happens. Is Amazon getting money from Perplexity for access to its site? Is Amazon paying the bots as advertising fee or somewhere in between?

I think for now. Travis Hoium: The question that I would have is does a different ecosystem with different incentives pop up? Think of a platform like Shopify, where Shopify does have an incentive.

If you're a small merchant, you're not getting into a Walmart store, for example, you may not want to go through the costs that are involved in Amazon. That's become a very costly platform to be on, and part of that is the advertising revenue. But what if a chatbot can just find you in your little store that you built on Shopify, because the incentive now is to find that perfect product at the perfect price?

Lou, is that the risk here, is that these other companies are playing offense, like a Shopify, for example, whereas Amazon looks like they're playing defense? Lou Whiteman: Yeah. Put it simply because who knows?

That's a scenario, but the status quo benefits Amazon. Travis Hoium: Yeah. Lou Whiteman: It makes sense for Amazon to preserve the status quo as long as it can to your point.

We don't know what the future looks like. But as these things work, when a shift happens, the incumbent usually isn't the beneficiary, even if they end up being OK with it. It's in the incumbent's best interest almost always to preserve the status quo.

Travis Hoium: We're going to stay on this AI topic for a moment, and when we come back, Lou is going to explain what a molt book is. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. Every week, we explore tales of this ancient culture.

The history of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of ancient Egypt.