Against the backdrop of continuously rising infrastructure investment, Wall Street's current focus has shifted from a simple "arms race" to "commercial implementation." According to information from trading desks, Bank of America stated in a report on January 5th that 2026 will be another pivotal year where AI announcements could significantly impact the markets. The importance of chip technology, frontier models, user data, and distribution channels is intensifying. While infrastructure investment continues to climb, AI capabilities remain the core asset and valuation driver for major internet stocks. Bank of America has summarized potential blockbuster announcements that could alter the competitive landscape and monetization trajectories in 2026, serving as key catalysts for investor sentiment.
Baseline Scenario: Seven Potential Blockbusters That Could Reshape the Competitive Landscape
Bank of America considers the following events highly probable for 2026, with direct implications for the moats and cash flows of tech giants: 1. Amazon.com and OpenAI Sign an "Agentic Commerce" Agreement The report indicates that, given news of Amazon's potential initial investment in OpenAI and significant progress by Alphabet in Gemini and its agent platform, the likelihood of an agentic commerce deal between Amazon and OpenAI is increasing. Any agreement would need to be carefully structured to protect Amazon's Prime membership ecosystem and could potentially include an advertising revenue share between Amazon and OpenAI. Analysts believe a well-structured agreement that protects the advertising business at attractive rates could help alleviate pressure on Amazon's retail segment while moderately increasing competitive concerns for Alphabet. 2. Alphabet and Apple Sign an AI Mobile Partnership Agreement Gemini 3.0 has emerged as a leading frontier model, and Android's AI capabilities have surpassed those of Apple's iOS. Following an August antitrust ruling favorable to Alphabet, media reports suggested Apple is close to a deal to license Gemini for revamping Siri. Such a mobile partnership could accelerate AI feature development within Apple's ecosystem while allowing Alphabet to expand Gemini's consumer reach. Analysts note that while somewhat anticipated, a new AI agreement could bolster investor confidence in the durability of Alphabet's search distribution and monetization advantages, potentially driving valuation multiple expansion. 3. Meta Platforms Launches AI Video Creation Tools in its Major Apps Based on market consensus, Meta is projected to exceed $100 billion in capital expenditure for 2026. This level of spending implies a significantly greater investment in internal AI capabilities and capacity compared to peers, who also need to add capacity for their substantial cloud businesses. The report suggests that some of Meta's AI capabilities might be dedicated to user-facing AI tools, such as AI video generation tools. Given management's positive commentary on Vibes usage within the Meta AI app and the importance of limiting the appeal of competing tools like Sora, analysts expect Facebook and Instagram could add AI video generation tabs in 2026. By distributing compelling new AI video generation tools, investors might anticipate improvements in Meta's user engagement and monetization. 4. Uber Signs L4 Autonomous Driving Commitments with Major Asian OEMs Uber's CEO recently visited Asia with the intent to drive autonomous vehicle deployment expansion into "more than 10 markets." The report posits that Uber could announce partnerships in 2026 with autonomous driving software providers like Nvidia or major automotive OEMs, potentially including vehicle commitments on the Uber platform. Analysts point out that while new OEM agreements involving vehicle commitments (likely with a 2028 timeframe) are unlikely to alter near-term US competitive concerns, they would be positive for long-term L4 competition against Waymo and Tesla and might prompt other OEMs to accelerate their own L4 development. 5. Booking Holdings Launches Chat-Based Booking Functionality Although Booking Holdings collaborates with Alphabet on agentic booking features, the company has been investing in its own AI capabilities (part of a $170 million investment plan for 2025) and has indicated potential announcements of new AI capabilities in 2026. Given the need to match competitor offerings, analysts believe a direct launch of new agentic booking functionality on the Booking platform is plausible for 2026. If Booking's chat-based booking feature is comparable to competitors' agentic AI products, its launch could mitigate concerns about direct traffic loss. 6. DoorDash Expands Delivery Partnerships with Autonomous Driving Partners In Q4 2025, DoorDash announced a new partnership with Waymo to launch autonomous delivery services in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The collaboration will initially start with deliveries from DashMart but could expand to other merchants. With autonomous vehicle launches anticipated in multiple new cities during 2026 and 2027, coupled with increased investment spending by DoorDash, the report sees a high probability of establishing more autonomous delivery partnerships in new metropolitan areas during 2026. Analysts suggest that while announcements of autonomous delivery partnerships aren't expected to provide immediate financial benefits for DoorDash, new agreements could help the market view the investment in automated delivery more favorably for its long-term payoff. 7. AI Unicorn IPOs Set Valuation Benchmarks for the Sector Various media reports, including those from Barron's and the Financial Times, have listed companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI as potential IPO candidates for 2026. Financial disclosures regarding revenue backlogs, growth, margins, and paths to profitability could significantly impact public hyperscale cloud providers, who are both partners and competitors. Furthermore, public market valuations hold significant implications for the valuation of AI investments by AWS, Google Cloud, and Meta. The report notes that media reports suggest revenue multiples for private AI companies are substantially higher than those for public companies; successful new AI IPOs could act as catalysts for well-positioned public companies like Alphabet.
Advanced Scenarios: Valuation Logic Shifts if These "Lower-Probability" Events Occur
Beyond the high-probability events, Bank of America also lists some "advanced" scenarios. If realized, these would significantly alter the market's perception of a company's technical prowess: Amazon.com acquires AI model technology to boost Nova Amazon's Nova model currently lags behind ChatGPT and Gemini. Acquiring frontier model technology through an acquisition or "acqui-hire" (similar to Meta's approach with Scale AI), while potentially lagging in immediate financial returns, could quickly dispel the significant market concern that Amazon is falling behind in LLM technology. Meta Platforms licenses its closed-source LLM (Avocado) to enterprises Meta is expected to release its Avocado model in Q1 2026. If this model is closed-source and demonstrates strong performance, licensing it to enterprises would create a new revenue stream, helping to justify its massive AI capital expenditures to Wall Street. Alphabet sells TPU chips directly to enterprises If Alphabet expands TPU sales beyond cloud hosting to direct sales to enterprises (for on-premise or hybrid deployment), it would blur the lines between hardware and software giants, enhance the perceived technical value of TPUs, and potentially drive an expansion of Alphabet's valuation multiples. Airbnb partners with OpenAI/Alphabet If Airbnb changes its strategy and leverages its unique inventory to secure an exclusive agentic booking agreement with OpenAI or Alphabet, it could generate incremental traffic and drive its stock price higher.
Extreme Hypotheses: Game-Changing Strategic Pivots and Regulatory Black Swans
Finally, Bank of America proposes some seemingly highly improbable ("Big Stretch") hypotheses that, if they occurred, would trigger significant market volatility: Meta Platforms might license external frontier models for product development If Meta's internally developed models underperform expectations, it might opt to license external models to reduce costs through faster time-to-market. This would represent a major strategic shift, potentially boosting free cash flow due to lower Capex but also raising concerns about its long-term technological capabilities. Amazon.com licenses and integrates ChatGPT or Gemini Despite significant competitive barriers, if Amazon were to integrate a competitor's model into its Bedrock platform to offer greater model choice diversity for AWS customers, Wall Street would likely view the expansion of AWS's model supply positively. US eases import rules on Chinese Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) Current regulations prohibit the import of electric vehicles containing Chinese software or hardware. However, given the substantial cost reductions in Chinese AV technology, a relaxation of these rules would significantly lower fleet costs for Uber and Lyft, dramatically improving their unit economics.
