2026.09.28 | Substack | Agents | FUNDA Weekly: Consumer Agents

Consumer agents are the newest AI story, and this week’s market reaction shows investors are taking it seriously. Meta’s Muse has drawn an enthusiastic response, with CPU and cybersecurity names also rallying sharply as investors look across the companies that could benefit. We have spent much of our recent research explaining why Muse could matter: it brings AI into everyday tasks such as shopping, travel, phone negotiations and personal administration, with a more direct connection to what users actually want to get done.

For Meta, that could change the return-on-investment discussion. Our review of 654 Muse use cases shows how an agent can learn about purchase intent earlier, including in categories where Google has historically been stronger. Our agency work explores how that could translate into advertising revenue, while WhatsApp and Business Agents offer further routes to transactions. There are implications across the infrastructure and software stack too: persistent agents need CPUs to run browsers and orchestrate APIs, and wider deployment creates more work around identity, permissions and security.

The next thing to watch is the arrival of similar products from OpenAI and other providers. We will be looking at what users adopt, how reliably the agents complete tasks, and whether early enthusiasm turns into sustained use and monetization. Falling inference costs should make these services more economical to scale; our work on tiered pricing and Jev explains why we remain constructive on adoption. The rally has raised expectations, so the next product launches and evidence of real usage will matter for both the platforms and the related stocks.

Expert network support for independent researchers. We are also helping independent researchers bring expert interviews into their research through FUNDA’s expert interview database. We are already collaborating with Vikram (@vikramskr) and Damnnang (@damnang2) among others, and look forward to working with more independent researchers. If you are an independent researcher interested in working with us, we would love to hear from you.

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Vikram Sekar

@vikramskr

Spoke 1:1 with the most excellent @FundaAI today, and I will be doing expert interviews on their platform. Although most people prefer to keep transcripts to institutional clients, they are letting me post to my Substack, and it will become part of their expert network database!

4:57 PM · Sep 25, 2026 · 23.6K Views

6 Replies · 83 Likes

[

Damnang

@damnang2

@FundaAI is amazing as always. They have an incredible expert network. You should start working with them right away!!!

FUNDA @FundaAI

We had a great conversation with @vikramskr today! Vikram runs both and , and we’re big fans of his work. We’re excited to collaborate with Vikram! If you’re also interested in partnering with us on our expert interview database,

2:33 AM · Sep 26, 2026 · 7.67K Views

1 Repost · 21 Likes

This Week’s Reports

META: Muse could provide the monetization inflection investors have been waiting for. Our use-case review and agency work examine how earlier purchase intent could expand Meta’s advertising opportunity, with WhatsApp and Business Agents offering additional routes to transactions.

Sep 21

We’ve been discussing Muse’s potential to reshape Meta’s business with our institutional clients for the past two weeks, especially during our weekly calls. We thought it was time to share that thinking here, too.

INTC: consumer agents add CPU demand to an already tight market. Our channel checks point to another server CPU price increase of at least 15% in 26Q4, supporting higher earnings estimates alongside continued foundry progress.

Sep 21

Based on the case study library from our recently published META report, Meta Muse handles a substantial volume of high-frequency tasks, such as cross-platform price comparisons (e.g., up to 146 searches for a single travel itinerary), processing massive email backlogs, and automated phone negotiations.

MU: the earnings debate is moving toward how long elevated pricing can last. We expect tight supply and AI demand to support a higher, longer memory-price plateau, with DRAM negotiations still pointing to stronger near-term pricing.

Sep 22

Over the past three months, many market participants have been concerned that memory prices would drop rapidly after peaking, following the path seen in past consumer electronics cycles. However, we already expressed our view in our report following our attendance at FMS in early August:

LLM pricing and Jev: lower task costs broaden the adoption opportunity. Our pricing note and first-week Jev study show how cheaper models can expand viable workflows, while Jev’s 10× median user-reported speed-up and 54.5× cost advantage coexist with limited production deployment.

Sep 24

On September 22, Anthropic launched Claude Opus 5.5 at $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens, 20% below Opus 5. Anthropic estimates that a typical customer workload costs 40% less to run. OpenAI launched GPT-6 Sol ($2/$10) and GPT-6 Luna ($0.10/$0.50) the same day, at prices 50–58% below the prevailing rates for the corresponding GPT-5.6 models and 60–92% below their July 9 launch prices. GPT-6 Luna is the first U.S. model since DeepSeek launched its V4 series to undercut DeepSeek’s cheapest model on both input and output list prices: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash costs $0.15/$0.60 even at off-peak rates. In the text, paired prices such as $4/$20 denote input/output charges per million tokens.

Sep 24

Jev is a “decision model” from TypeSafe AI, released September 15, 2026 and opened to all users on September 20. It does not generate text. It answers questions with a fixed answer set: pick an option, score on a scale, or judge true/false, and attaches a confidence score. The launch quickly gathered industry interests, and some investors were asking whether it’s a significant negative to compute demand.

Enterprise AI Vol.5: cost optimization and application expansion are happening together. Ten company interviews show most still planning higher spending, with API usage and measurable business returns increasingly shaping the next budget round.

Business Returns Shape Further Investment

FUNDA

Sep 25

Hi, Welcome to the fifth edition of our grand enterprise tokenomics study. This week, we interviewed 10 companies, spanning payments, telecoms, payroll and HR services, e-commerce, used-car sales, media agencies, digital marketing, pharmaceuticals, diversified holdings and industrial software. Most still plan to spend more on AI, but the source of the next increase is changing. At companies that have already equipped employees with subscription plans, growth increasingly comes from heavier use of APIs and business applications; elsewhere, expanding employee access remains part of the plan. Companies are also spending less per call, by routing work to cheaper models, negotiating prices and caching. That has slowed growth in total spending, but not stopped it; only the media agency’s spending is flat.

Premium Report Snapshot

A portion of our research is reserved for Premium subscribers and is not distributed via Substack. Below is a snapshot of what Premium subscribers received this week beyond the Substack feed.

Research | ABF Substrates: Beneficiaries of Expanding CPU Demand

Subscribed

Agent-driven CPU demand and larger substrate areas on new platforms are tightening the ABF supply outlook, with major producers expected to be fully utilized in 26Q4 and lead times at 48–52 weeks. Our note expects only 10%–15% capacity growth in 2027 and identifies 27Q1 contract renewals as a potential pricing catalyst for suppliers including Ibiden, Unimicron, AT&S, Nan Ya PCB and Kinsus.

Research | AI Hardware: Singapore Roadshow Feedback and the Next Specification Upgrade

Investors we met in Singapore generally see AI hardware valuations as reflecting 2027 earnings and want the Vera Rubin Ultra, TPU v9 and Trainium T4 roadmaps to support upward revisions to 2028 estimates. Power and ABF rank ahead in their preferences, with high-end material pricing, liquid cooling and power architecture upgrades among the catalysts to watch.

Research | SMTC: Rising NPO Expectations Drive Shares to a New High

Chinese CSPs are requesting Semtech TIAs in 3.2T NPO test samples targeting 2027 production, while our note places NVIDIA’s 6.4T NPO testing before year-end, initial production in 2H27 and a larger ramp in 2028. A rising 1.6T mix is also expected to support gradual gross-margin improvement from the October quarter.

Weekly Expert Interviews Summary

A snapshot of the expert interviews we conducted during the past week is below; full transcripts and takeaways are available on the FUNDA platform.

Enterprise AI: Subscription Rollouts and Budget Discipline (AMZN, MSFT)

Head, Data & AI, M1 Limited

The expert estimates monthly AI spending could rise from about $10k to $30k within six months as paid seats expand, with budgets dependent on measurable cost savings.

Publicis: API Controls and Workflow Returns

Executive, Global Leader in Marketing Services

The expert estimates API spending fell 10%–20% over six months while subscription spending grew about 10%, as governance tightened and reusable workflows took priority.

Sanofi: ROI-Led Expansion of Agentic Workflows (SNY)

AI Executive, Top global pharmaceutical firm

The expert estimates monthly AI-related spending of $30mn–40mn and calendar-year growth of about 20%, as workflows with demonstrable returns move into larger deployments.

AI Server Components: Allocation and Supply Constraints (NVDA, ARW, AVGO, INTC, AMD, STM)

Executive, Electronics Firm

The expert describes near-allocation conditions in HBM, other memory and power semiconductors, with supply availability, ROI and power capacity shaping infrastructure demand and no evidence yet of widespread double ordering.

Google: 6D Torus and Hybrid Optical Interconnects (GOOGL)

Senior R&D Manager, Google

The expert describes a proposed 6D torus and hybrid electrical-optical architecture, with insertion loss, fault isolation and packaging still constraining future silicon-photonics adoption.

Cybersecurity: AI Budgets and Platform Consolidation (CRWD, OKTA)

Strategy Executive, Top US telecom provider

The expert estimates 2026 security budgets will grow 10%–15%, with expanding AI use and consolidation of point products potentially driving faster spending growth at strategic platforms.

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