Rosenblatt raises Amazon price target to $360, dismisses AI agent threat

By Splitfeed EditorialLast updated Sep 30, 2026, 21:50 UTC

On September 30, 2026, Rosenblatt analyst Scott Devitt raised his 12-month price target on Amazon stock from its previous level to $360, while keeping a Buy rating in place. The core argument in his note was that fears about AI shopping agents undermining Amazon's advertising business are overstated. Separately, Retail Brew reported the same day that Amazon has been actively opening itself up to outside AI agents rather than working to block them.

The concern Devitt was pushing back against is specific and structural. AI shopping agents, software that browses retailers and completes purchases autonomously on a user's behalf, could in theory skip past Amazon's sponsored listings entirely. Because a significant portion of Amazon's retail revenue flows from advertisers paying for placement that human shoppers see, an agent that routes around those listings would chip away at that model. That is the disruption thesis circulating among analysts and industry observers, and it is a genuine live debate rather than a fringe worry. Rosenblatt's position is that this framing is wrong, and that Amazon's own posture toward AI agents, leaning into cooperation rather than resistance, supports that conclusion.

None of the three camps have published specific reactions to this story yet. Pro-AI commentators would typically welcome Devitt's read, arguing that AI agents represent an efficiency gain for consumers and that large platforms like Amazon are adaptable enough to monetize new shopping behaviors rather than be destroyed by them. Anti-AI voices would more likely side with the disruption concern, arguing that agent-mediated commerce threatens ad-dependent business models in ways incumbents are not fully prepared for. Middle Ground observers would probably note that both outcomes are plausible depending on adoption speed and how quickly Amazon can redesign its monetization layer to reach agent-driven purchases.

The clearest signal to watch for is how Amazon's advertising revenue trends over the next several earnings cycles as AI agent adoption becomes measurable. Any formal announcements from Amazon about agent-specific ad products or API arrangements with third-party agent developers would also help settle whether Rosenblatt's cooperative framing holds up in practice.