Who Should Pay for AI Shopping Agents?

Tobi Lütke is fatalistic about who pays for AI shopping agents. Alex Heath put Shopify's take rate at about 3 percent and asked whether any of it would go to the agents. Tobi Lütke says most of that already goes to the credit card companies, so the margin has to be shared and little is left to fight over or to give away.

He thinks the right move for those startups, if they can get the financing, may be to charge the person using the agent. The agents are of tremendous value. On a reverse test, the money someone would have to be paid to agree they can never use Muse again is going up by the day. A charge depends on how much unique value the product provides, whether it showed up in the right place at the right time, and how onboarding went. Alex Heath asked about a figure of 2 percent of American households paying for AI. Tobi Lütke says that share is very low, and it is still early.