By Jamie Murray, CFA
Meta’s agentic commerce push meets new opportunities in global oil.
Markets are being reshaped by forces that, at first glance, have little in common. Meta is pushing AI beyond conversation and into agentic commerce, creating new opportunities and potential disruption across the digital economy. In travel, Amadeus offers a window into how established technology infrastructure could evolve as AI agents change the way consumers search, book and transact. Meanwhile, shifting Middle East oil flows are easing immediate supply concerns, but higher transportation costs and continued geopolitical risk are creating a different kind of opportunity for energy investors. Together, these developments show how technological change and global disruption continue to reshape where we see long-term value.
Muse gives Meta an early lead in agentic commerce
Meta’s launch of Muse marks an important shift from conversational chatbots to autonomous execution. Unlike traditional assistants that rely primarily on structured API calls, Muse operates within a persistent virtual computing environment, allowing it to complete complex, multi-step workflows such as booking travel, submitting forms, drafting email replies and sourcing products in the background, even after a user disconnects.
Mark Zuckerberg has indicated that as transaction volumes across Meta’s platforms scale, the company intends to monetize this activity directly through transaction fees and take rates. The commercial implications could be significant.
When an autonomous agent can connect directly with Amazon, Shop Pay or an airline’s booking portal, the consumer journey begins to move away from browsing, scrolling and clicking towards an ongoing dialogue in which the agent increasingly handles the transaction. Investors have welcomed the roadmap. As we wrote last month, Meta is right to pursue AI aggressively, and products with clear commercial applications are exactly what the company needs to justify its substantial long-term infrastructure investment.
The more interesting strategic question may be what happens to the legacy aggregators. Platforms such as Expedia, Wayfair and Airbnb have built high-margin businesses by aggregating fragmented inventory and simplifying consumer discovery. Autonomous agents capable of searching the open web, coordinating logistics and transacting directly with suppliers could weaken the role of these digital storefronts. Over time, agents may capture more of the economics associated with discovery and transactions, reshaping how consumers search and how intermediaries get paid.
Amadeus could become an important enabler of agentic travel
Last year, we initiated a position in global travel technology provider Amadeus IT Group. The company powers roughly half of the world’s airlines, supporting bookings, seat management, baggage, reservations, payments and ticketing changes. Amadeus has also expanded into hotel operations.
The airline and hospitality IT side of the business is particularly attractive to us because of how deeply embedded the technology is in day-to-day operations. These are mission-critical systems that need to operate around the clock. As travel moves towards agentic commerce, airline reservation systems will increasingly need to communicate with a new generation of digital agents. Amadeus appears well positioned for that transition.
The other major part of the business is Amadeus’ global distribution system, or GDS. These systems connect airline inventory with thousands of travel agencies around the world and support booking, ticketing, changes and cancellations. In 2025, the business generated €3.12B in revenue across 484 million bookings.
The GDS business faces greater disruption if AI agents increasingly bypass traditional aggregators and transact directly with airlines. We expect growth in this segment to slow and mature as newer distribution capabilities gain adoption, although any decline is likely to take time. Legacy corporate and travel agencies continue to run significant portions of their businesses through GDS systems and often receive rebates from Amadeus on booking fees charged to airlines, giving them little immediate incentive to switch. Newer distribution channels also generate higher revenue per booking, which could help support revenue even if overall booking volumes decline.
Looking five years out, we believe Amadeus’ airline and hotel IT management systems will represent a substantially larger portion of the company and increasingly form the core of the investment story. A greater weighting towards these higher-quality, mission-critical businesses could support multiple appreciation. Combined with a revenue base that could be approximately 50% larger and share buybacks funded through free cash flow, we believe there is a credible path for the share price to double over that period.
The Strait is slightly less closed, but moving oil remains expensive
Middle Eastern crude exports have recovered as producers expand tanker shuttle operations through the Strait of Hormuz. Tankers carry oil out of the Gulf, transfer it to other vessels off Oman or the UAE and then return to load again.
Kpler estimates reported by Reuters put regional crude exports at 12.8 million barrels per day in September, compared with 18.8 million barrels per day in February. Saudi Arabia has also increased shipments from its Gulf terminals after attacks disrupted its East-West pipeline and exports from the Red Sea port of Yanbu.
The recovery has come at a substantial financial cost. Shuttle voyages require additional vessels and offshore transfers, while heightened security risks have driven freight rates sharply higher. Reuters reported shipping costs exceeding $30 per barrel on some routes, and Aramco has considered discounts on crude transferred off Oman to help buyers absorb those costs.
Oil is moving, but the export system remains more expensive and vulnerable to disruption than it was before the conflict. For investors, recovering export volumes reduce the immediate risk of an acute supply shortage, while the cost and fragility of the current workarounds continue to create opportunity within the energy sector. We recently added Chevron to the Global Equity Growth Fund to increase our exposure to that opportunity, while recognizing that oil prices will remain highly sensitive to changes in regional security and shipping conditions.
Navigating changing markets
Periods of disruption are rarely just about identifying what is changing. The more important question is where value moves as a result. Whether it is Meta building a new commercial layer around AI, Amadeus adapting the infrastructure behind global travel or energy companies navigating a more complex oil market, we continue to look for businesses positioned to benefit as markets evolve.
