Meta shares surge 11% as Muse AI agent tops app charts ahead of Connect

Meta Platforms shares surged about 11% on Monday to close at $741.25 — their highest level since October 2025 — as Wall Street bet that the company’s new personal AI agent, Muse, could finally turn its enormous AI spending into revenue.

The jump followed a Sunday research note in which Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski raised Meta’s price target to $796 from $640, reiterating an Overweight rating and writing that Muse heralds “the transition to consumer AI assistants from chatbots”. The shares are up 29.5% since the start of September, on track for their best monthly run in more than 13 years.

Meta launched Muse on 8 September: an autonomous agent that carries out multi-step tasks such as shopping, buying tickets and filling in web forms, available in a standalone app or through WhatsApp. It offers a free tier alongside $20- and $100-a-month plans, and gained a Mac app on 18 September. According to Sensor Tower data cited by Barron’s, Muse has been the most-downloaded free iPhone app in the United States for four straight days, ahead of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Meta’s own figures, published by chief AI officer Alexandr Wang, claim 2.8 million downloads in 12 days and 642,000 US mobile daily users by day 12 — Meta has not released independent third-party data. Attention now turns to Meta Connect on 23 September, where chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is expected to show off more of Muse; on Monday, Shopify chief executive Tobi Lütke said the company would enable agentic checkout through Muse with Shop Pay across all of its stores.

Sources

• Barron’s, “Meta’s Latest AI Bet Is Boosting the Stock Ahead of Flagship Conference” (21 Sept 2026)
• MarketWatch, “Meta’s stock is enjoying its best month in more than two years thanks to the company’s hot new AI assistant” (21 Sept 2026)