Amazon sues to evict the AI shopper while Amex pays $125 to move it in
The Ninth Circuit vacated the injunction against Perplexity's Comet on 4 August, and Amazon's rehearing bid failed on 10 September. On 1 October, American Express began paying US business cardholders $125 each to run the same agent Amazon is suing to evict.
Vincent Jiang · 3 min read
The agent a court says touches nothing
An American Express business cardholder who charges $325 or more on a Perplexity Enterprise plan this month gets $125 back, plus 1,000 Computer Credits to spend on agent tasks 5. The agent behind that offer, Perplexity's Comet browser assistant, is the same one a federal appeals court has ruled accesses nothing. On 4 August 2026 the Ninth Circuit vacated the injunction keeping Comet out of Amazon's store, holding that the user, not Perplexity, "accesses" Amazon's computers 12. It was the first appellate decision on how computer-access statutes treat AI agents 1, and Amazon's 10 September rehearing bid died without one judge asking for a vote 3.
Amazon's weapon is now the contract, not the statute
What Amazon is defending is an advertising business forecast at $83.34 billion this year, revenue that depends on humans browsing sponsored pages 11. The court itself pointed the retailer back to its terms of service 2. Amazon used them on 21 September, blocking Meta's Muse agent with a popup citing its Conditions of Use, and filed a 41-page amended complaint against Perplexity the same day 4.
A new complaint attacks the ruling's premise
The filing alleges that Comet for iOS, launched 18 March 2026, copies a user's Amazon session cookie to Perplexity servers that run a virtual browser and call Amazon directly, so that "no user device touches Amazon's servers" 4. If proven, that lands on the exact architecture the August holding relied on. Amazon puts damages beyond $260,000 and counts 185,712 Comet sessions on its store as of 15 June 2026 4. These are allegations, and Perplexity has not yet answered them 4.
American Express subsidizes the agent's rent
While Amazon litigates, the issuer pays for distribution. The 1 October package gates ten prebuilt business Skills behind an auto-renewing Enterprise subscription and reads card data through a read-only Plaid link, with both offers open through 29 March 2027 5. Amex's terms also disown the product: outputs are not advice, and Amex is not responsible for Perplexity's platform 5. Perplexity is private, valued around $21 billion early this year after going subscription-first in February 8, so the card network's marketing budget lands directly as subscription revenue.
Mastercard builds the tollgate
The same week, Mastercard expanded Agent Pay with a probability score for AI-initiated transactions now in US testing, plus trust work with Cloudflare and Skyfire 6. Its agentic-commerce report cites projections of $1 trillion in US retail by 2030 and more than $15 trillion in B2B spending by 2028 7. Chief executive Michael Miebach told investors in July: "We expect cards will prevail in an agentic world" 9. Hedera's Lindsay Walker, speaking at The AI Conference, put real autonomy five years out: with agents, "cards are not present, ever" 7.
The next moves are a docket and a deadline
Watch for Perplexity's answer to the amended complaint, any Supreme Court petition from Amazon, and what the March expiry of the Amex offers does to Enterprise sign-ups. One company is paying lawyers to keep the agent out of the store; the other is paying cardholders $125 a head to move it in.
Deepdive
AI-generated from this story and its cited sources. Not investment advice.
