AI stocks: 3 winners and 3 losers in the AI agent economy

The stock market is entering an era that will be shaped by the rise of AI agents.

Meta’s Muse, a personal AI agent that has risen to dominate the App Store and surpasses ChatGPT as the most-downloaded free app, sparked a major rally in stocks on Monday as investors grappled with the implications of an agentic boom. Chipmakers were up big, recovering from a week of volatile trading, while the Nasdaq Composite hit a fresh all-time high that extended in Tuesday’s session.

Investors have been talking about how AI will change the economic and market landscape since the tech debuted four years ago, but a future reshaped by more autonomous AI systems looks to be in sight, as adoption increases and impacts are felt across businesses and industries. For everyday people, AI agents could help with tasks from booking flights to negotiating insurance rates to filing taxes.

In markets, there’s just one question: who stands to win from a coming wave of agentic AI tools? Here are the areas investing pros are eyeing as winners and losers in the new era.

The winners

1. Hyperscalers and hardware

Hyperscalers and chipmakers are obvious winners in a world driven by AI agents, Bret Kenwell, an investment and options analyst at eToro, told Business Insider. Hyperscalers create the agents, while chipmakers would help supply the underlying AI infrastructure.

The dynamic was on display on Monday as Meta surged 11% and Intel spiked 12%.

Jose Torres, a senior economist at Interactive Brokers said the enduring winners among the companies making AI agents remains to be seen.

“I definitely would expect that the race amongst the agents is going to create some kind of bifurcated performances across the Magnificent Seven, as well as the semiconductors, as investors separate the winners from the losers,” he said.

New of Meta’s Muse AI rising in the App Store this week also shifted the market’s attention toward CPU suppliers as opposed to GPU makers like Nvidia. Intel’s surge was Exhibit A, but AMD and Qualcomm also posted big one-day rallies, up 10% and 9% respectively.

Meta’s gain boosted the broader Magnificent Seven cohort to fresh records. The Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF is up 10% year-to-date.

2. Industrials

Industrials, which have flourished amid the AI boom, will likely continue to do well as more people use AI agents, Torres said. Material inputs, like copper and silver, have been a key constraint in building more AI infrastructure.

The State Street Industrial Select Sector SPDR ETF is up 7% year-to-date. Over the last five years, the fund has soared 68%, largely driven by enthusiasm for AI.

3. Industries with AI-exposed workforces

Areas of the market that are highly vulnerable to AI job disruption could also be winners, assuming those companies turn to AI agents to reduce headcount and cut costs, Torres said.

He pointed to sectors like finance, customer service, and other industries that depend on a wide base of entry-level workers who do repetitive tasks, which are more at risk of AI displacement.

Kenwell said similar risks are facing industries like marketing, law, and accounting, though he noted the negative impact would mostly be limited to companies that were not as strongly positioned for the AI era.

“You can whip up an image with a prompt instead of having someone spend half their day doing alterations. It’s customer service or call centers now with chatbots and the AI voice people, it’s administration work,” he said.

The losers

1. Software stocks

Software is an area that could be hurt as people turn to AI agents, Kenwell said. He pointed the turmoil in the sector at the start of the year due to concerns about how mass AI adoption could impact demand for software-as-a-service companies. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF plunged more than 30% from its peak in the first half of the year.

Existential fears about the fate of SaaS companies has since abated, with many of the hardest hit names recovering and up sharply for the year, but new AI agents could again shake confidence in the sector, Kenwell said.

“It’s just one more news item to shake up whether you’re looking at Booking.com or Salesforce or Adobe,” he said.

2. Marketplaces and transactional middlemen

Tom Champion, a senior research analyst who covers Meta at Piper Sandler, said he believes marketplaces and other services that act as middlemen in online transactions could be hurt in a world where consumers are deploying AI agents. He pointed to how Amazon blocked Muse from shopping on its platform, a measure that protects the value of Amazon’s business.

“Let’s say you have a marketplace and all of a sudden the agent is able to go there directly on the customer’s behalf. Well, I mean, it’s like the value of that property or site then goes down,” Champion said.

Gig economy stocks could also be impacted, he added, referring to platforms like DoorDash, though AI agents could theoretically purchase goods directly from vendors.

3. Consumer discretionary

AI adoption is an inherent negative for consumer discretionary stocks, Torres said. He sees a few reasons for that:

1. Job displacement from AI could cause more people to curb spending.
2. Fewer people employed overall reduces wage inflation, as more workers compete for a shrinking pool of available jobs.

Both trends could hit stocks that rely on consumer spending, he said, adding that the sector has underperformed all year.

Consumer discretionary has been the worst-performing stock sector in the S&P 500, shedding about 5% year-to-date, compared to a gain of 13% for the broader index.