Daily Earnings: Assassinating the outside middleman (TTWO, WDAY) | May 21

Corporate AI optimization is explicitly pivoting outward to eliminate expensive third-party consulting and marketing agencies, while physical supply chain constraints force major retailers to bleed margin to ocean shippers. - Take-Two (TTWO) used internal generative AI to produce premium $100,000 commercial spots for zero dollars.- Workday (WDAY) aims for zero-dollar deployments, freezing headcount to wipe out legacy systems integrators.- Walmart (WMT) quietly absorbed a $175 million fuel penalty entirely driven by global ocean rerouting.Digital platforms are aggressively manipulating their ecosystems to unlock zero-cost operating leverage, but physical retail remains tightly bound by geography and global friction.