Matt Frankel

I use AI to find cheap flights all the time.

It goes a step beyond that.

The threat's really evolved with the emergence of agentic AI.

which could potentially allow travelers to bypass any booking sites altogether and simply have an AI assistant that automatically finds and books the best flight, hotel, rental car, whatever for them for a trip, and just renders these useless.

That's the bear case.

I'm more on the fence.

There's a lot to be said for things like loyalty programs, which many of these intermediaries offer.

Having human available customer service, which is something that, as of now, ChatGPT and Quad haven't figured out how to replace.

But there is a serious existential threat here.

It will be interesting to see how companies like Expedia and Instacart really react to it and use it to their advantage.

Elon Musk knows this very well, that one of the biggest things SpaceX has going for it, as far as a giant IPO, is a vast amount of retail interest.

When you turn Tesla into a 400X stock and

then you delay your biggest IPO for 10 years, you're going to build up a lot of retail interest.

The plans to allocate 30% to retail, that compares to 5% to 10% for the typical IPO.

Even that's higher than it used to be.

It's not just that.

There are several platforms that have

made it easier for companies to do this.

SoFi prioritizes IPO access for everybody, Robinhood.

There are a lot of different platforms.