Personal agents are booming, creating new demand for software? Morgan Stanley is bullish on communications, customer service, and e-commerce infrastructure.

The success of Meta's Muse and its proprietary product Instinct has prompted investors to re-examine the structural impact of the AI agent wave on the software industry. Morgan Stanley believes that the rise of consumer agents is not a short-term performance catalyst, but is strengthening the medium-term bullish logic for communications, network infrastructure, and e-commerce software.

According to a report by Zhuifeng Trading Platform, Morgan Stanley analysts Elizabeth Porter and others pointed out in their latest research report that the accelerated adoption of personal AI agents is reshaping the growth logic of communication software from the demand side—consumers are using agents to initiate more business interactions, while enterprise-side AI is reducing response costs. Both are jointly driving the expansion of communication volume and usage-based monetization models. This trend is most directly impacted by Twilio and Wix.

For internet infrastructure providers, the report argues that the fallacy of "declining human traffic leading to shrinking website construction demand" is being redefined: agents increasingly need systems to discover merchants, book services, and complete transactions, potentially benefiting the online transaction infrastructure needs of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMBs). Morgan Stanley explicitly rated the North American software sector as "Attractive," but also cautioned that this trend reflects more of an improvement in valuation levels and long-term expectations than a direct boost to recent quarterly reports and earnings guidance.

Muse and Instinct: From Question-Answering Tool to Task Execution

According to a Morgan Stanley report, Muse and Instinct are next-generation personal AI agents, with the key difference being the shift from "answering questions" to "acting as an agent to complete tasks." Meta officially launched Muse on September 8, 2026, through its app and WhatsApp; Instinct is a private product, primarily accessible via iMessage.

Both products offer features such as web browsing, form filling, and travel booking capabilities, and can complete transactions with user authorization. In mid-September, both companies launched limited-edition outbound calling features, allowing agents to proactively contact merchants to handle appointments, reservations, and customer service matters.

Morgan Stanley views this functional expansion as a key milestone—the agent has evolved from passively responding to user commands to proactively interacting with businesses on behalf of users, directly bridging the gap between consumer behavior and enterprise communication systems.

Communication software: Opening up new entry points on the demand side

The report points out that the impact of AI on the contact center market has previously focused on enterprises handling existing inquiries with fewer agents, putting pressure on the traditional billing model based on the number of agents. The emergence of consumer agents has introduced a new opportunity on the demand side: consumers can use agents to initiate inquiries and tasks that were previously abandoned due to lack of time or willingness.

Morgan Stanley summarizes this logic as: "Enterprise AI makes responses cheaper, and consumer AI makes initiation easier." The expansion of communication volume can, on the one hand, alleviate the pressure on agents, and on the other hand, accelerate the demand for automated services that are billed by duration, number of interactions, or results.

The report argues that RingCentral's clearest opportunity lies in its pay-as-you-go AI Reception (AIR) product. While the bearish logic for NICE and FIVN has weakened, their ability to succeed at the AI level and monetize it to offset the pressure on human agents remains uncertain. The report shows that AI revenue accounts for approximately 15% of FIVN's subscription revenue, a similar proportion in NICE's annualized cloud revenue. Morgan Stanley anticipates seeing AI revenue accelerate towards this or higher percentages, while overall revenue stabilizes or even accelerates.

Twilio: Usage Expansion Plus Software Added Value

The report positions Twilio as the company with the broadest exposure in the communications field. Morgan Stanley emphasizes that the core opportunity lies not in the conversation with the AI assistant itself, but in the series of communication behaviors triggered by the agent in completing tasks—authentication SMS, booking confirmations, and follow-up messages all constitute incremental communication usage.

At the voice level, Twilio supports both agent-initiated outbound calls and enterprise-side call answering. Furthermore, software add-ons such as Conversation Relay provide Twilio with additional pathways beyond pure connectivity services, enabling it to generate higher revenue per interaction.

However, Morgan Stanley remains cautious about short-term earnings expectations, citing Twilio's previous statement that the company had cautioned that first-half performance exceeding expectations by more than 5% should not be considered the "new normal," and that the company expects excess performance to moderate.

Network infrastructure: From traffic logic to transaction logic

For network infrastructure providers such as Wix and GoDaddy, the report argues that the rise of agents is reshaping the logic of demand: the value of a website is no longer primarily reflected in its ability to handle human traffic, but rather in its backend capabilities to support agents in discovering merchants, completing bookings, and facilitating transactions.

Morgan Stanley believes that Wix has better exposure than GoDaddy—the latter's large domain name business diluted the transmission effect of the agent wave. Wix's MCP (Model Context Protocol) and Headless strategy are expected to maintain its role as a backend operation layer and preserve its core relationship with merchants in booking, e-commerce, and business operations, even when external AI platforms dominate website generation or consumer interfaces.

The report also warns that feature bundling poses a monetization risk: integrating related features into larger platforms like GoDaddy Airo may boost user retention in the short term, but it may not generate independent paid upgrade revenue. Competition from AI-native website building tools also poses ongoing pressure.

E-commerce infrastructure: Shopify is in the most advantageous position

In the e-commerce software sector, Morgan Stanley explicitly points out that Shopify is the most direct beneficiary. The report argues that Shopify has built the core infrastructure required for an agent platform—including a standardized real-time product and inventory layer (Catalog), a merchant-side control panel (Agentic Storefronts), and the transaction standard (UCP).

The strategic value of this system lies in its integration efficiency: once the Agent platform connects to Shopify, it can cover billions of products from millions of merchants without having to negotiate and maintain connections with each consumer brand individually, thus giving Shopify a significant competitive advantage at the integration level.

Furthermore, the fragmentation of the consumer discovery path—extending from search, social media, and retail media to agent channels—further highlights the value of a unified commerce system. The ability of a single data recording system to integrate and coordinate multi-channel performance is becoming increasingly critical. The report also points out that as agent activities proliferate, filtering mechanisms based on product attributes rather than media investment may give long-tail niche brands on the platform more exposure. Morgan Stanley stated that it will conduct a more in-depth, dedicated study on Shopify's multi-layered opportunities within the agent ecosystem.

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