Meta Platforms’ personal artificial intelligence agent Muse is rapidly building an audience and, according to analysts, is putting consumers back among the main drivers of Wall Street’s AI theme. Investor attention, which had been focused largely on business and enterprise AI, is now shifting more visibly toward consumer-facing applications.
According to Jefferies and Sensor Tower, Muse logged more than 2.5 million downloads worldwide in its first two weeks. That topped Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini over the same period. UBS, citing Apptopia data, also said Muse is even outpacing OpenAI’s original ChatGPT chatbot in iOS downloads.
JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth wrote in a client note that Muse could become the industry’s leading consumer AI app. In his view, it has the potential to become the most widely used consumer AI application since ChatGPT. Jefferies meanwhile raised its price target on Meta to $875 from $710, implying 18% upside from Monday’s close.
What it means for the AI trade
Mark Mahaney, Evercore ISI’s head of Internet research, told CNBC that consumer AI had been largely overlooked as investors chased enterprise AI. UBS analyst Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi went further, saying consumer agents may power the next phase of the broader AI trade. In her view, Muse offers early evidence that consumer AI agents can achieve broad adoption, opening new monetization opportunities beyond enterprise applications while also reinforcing demand for computing power.
JPMorgan’s trading desk said Muse is once again highlighting the need for CPU server demand, helping lift sentiment around INTC, AMD and ARM US Equity. As of 11:00 a.m. ET on Tuesday, Intel and AMD had pared earlier gains and were only modestly higher, while Micron was up about 3% and Arm Holdings had climbed more than 1%.
Brian Nowak of Morgan Stanley said the consumer spending market that could be digitized through agentic offerings is massive and varied. He estimated roughly $30 trillion of consumer spending could move into such channels, spanning online advertising, e-commerce, travel, food delivery and rideshare services.
Friction in e-commerce
Muse’s rapid rise is already creating tension in online shopping. CNBC reported that Amazon blocked Muse on its website this week, preventing it from acting as a personal shopper for users and potentially displacing Amazon’s own AI agents.
An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that third-party applications offering to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service-provider decisions. According to the spokesperson, agentic third-party apps such as Muse have the same obligations, and Amazon has asked Meta to remove Amazon from the experience.
Several Wall Street analysts also said Muse could increase app cancellations and software churn. Deutsche Bank analyst Bryan Kraft wrote last week that streaming services and The New York Times appear the most vulnerable. He said Muse could help users cancel services between major content releases or sports seasons, identify subscriptions already available through existing bundles, and switch to lower-priced tiers.
Muse’s success is also raising questions about Meta’s nascent cloud business, which the company introduced earlier this year as another potential way to monetize excess computing capacity. Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani wrote that, given Muse’s success, it is unlikely Meta would choose to rent out that excess capacity.
