Meta Platforms' new personal artificial intelligence agent, Muse, is rapidly gaining traction, shifting Wall Street's focus on AI from enterprise solutions back to consumer applications. According to Jefferies and Sensor Tower, Muse garnered more than 2.5 million global downloads in its initial two weeks, surpassing the early adoption rates of Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini. UBS, citing Apptopia data, noted that Muse has even exceeded OpenAI's original ChatGPT in iOS mobile downloads. JPMorgan's Doug Anmuth believes Muse has the potential to become the leading consumer AI application. This success led Jefferies to increase Meta's price target to $875 from $710, indicating an 18% upside from Monday's close.
The rapid adoption of Muse is highlighting potential new monetization opportunities beyond enterprise applications and is expected to drive increased demand for computing power. Analysts at UBS suggested that consumer AI agents like Muse could power the next phase of the AI trade. JPMorgan's trading desk observed that Muse's success is bringing the need for CPU server demand into the spotlight, leading to gains in chipmakers such as Intel, AMD, and Arm Holdings. While Intel and AMD saw modest increases, Micron was up about 3% and Arm Holdings climbed over 1%. Morgan Stanley's Brian Nowak estimates a substantial market for digital consumer spending, roughly $30 trillion, that could be digitized through agentic offerings across various sectors like online advertising, e-commerce, and travel.
Muse's success is also causing friction, particularly in online retail. Amazon reportedly blocked Muse from its website, preventing it from acting as a personal shopper for users, citing concerns about it bypassing personalization features and potentially capturing customer credentials and scraping account data. An Amazon spokesperson stated that third-party applications making purchases on behalf of customers should operate openly and respect service provider decisions. This move by Amazon suggests a competitive landscape where established platforms may resist AI agents that could disrupt their business models. Deutsche Bank's Bryan Kraft also warned that Muse could increase app cancellations and software churn, with streaming services and The New York Times being particularly vulnerable as users might cancel services between major content releases or move to lower-priced tiers. The success of Muse also casts doubt on Meta's nascent cloud business, as it becomes less likely that Meta would rent out excess computing capacity given the agent's high demand.
