Meta Stock Closes Up 6.6% After Launching Muse Personal AI Agent With Paid Subscription Tiers

Meta Platforms surged as much as 7% on Wednesday and closed up 6.6%, its third-best session of the year, after the company unveiled Muse, a personal AI agent launched Tuesday evening that can autonomously send emails, book travel, complete web forms, and handle other digital tasks without constant user input. Muse is powered by Meta's Muse Spark model and runs inside a dedicated virtual machine called Muse Secure VM to isolate user data, available on iOS, Android, and muse.ai across the US. The product offers a free tier alongside paid subscriptions at $20 per month and $100 per month, giving Wall Street a concrete revenue line to model against Meta's massive and previously hard-to-justify AI capital expenditure, which analysts have pegged at $145 billion. Within 24 hours of launch, Muse had climbed to the number four spot on the Apple App Store, and Meta said early interest had "blown way past" expectations.

The launch directly addressed one of the most persistent criticisms of Meta's AI strategy: that the company was spending heavily on infrastructure without a subscription product to show for it. KeyBanc reaffirmed its Overweight rating and maintained a $780 price target following the launch, while analysts at TD Cowen described Muse as a "notable" new revenue stream. A Seeking Alpha analyst initiated Meta with a strong buy and a $882 price target, arguing the stock remains undervalued. Barron's noted that Alphabet and Amazon should take notice, framing Muse as a direct competitive threat in the consumer AI agent market.

Separately, Meta announced the acquisition of Swedish AI startup Stilla, founded in Stockholm in 2024 and backed by $5 million in pre-seed funding, to accelerate Meta Business Agent, its AI system for merchants operating across WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. Stilla's technology can retain company context and execute actions across thousands of workplace software integrations. Meta Business Agent is already used by more than one million businesses, with over one billion active business conversations occurring across its messaging apps daily. Meta also said it plans to expand its presence in Sweden following the deal.

The stock's rally contrasted sharply with a broader market decline, as oil prices surpassed $100 a barrel for the first time since July amid US-Iran hostilities, pushing the S&P 500 down roughly 0.5% and the Nasdaq down about 0.7% at midday. Mark Zuckerberg's net worth rose $13 billion in the week through Wednesday as Meta shares extended their rally. Options traders made bullish bets on the stock following the Muse launch, with one options trade reported to have returned 500%. Chief Accounting Officer Aaron Anderson sold approximately $2 million in Meta shares on September 9, a routine insider transaction disclosed alongside the broader market activity.