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Zuckerberg says a quarter of people who set up the AI agent use it daily. Profitability depends on growing revenue and sharply improving computing efficiency.
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Meta’s next test for Muse is whether transaction fees and paid access to advanced models can support an agent whose operating costs remain unusually high. On its Oct. 21 earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people had adopted it, and about a quarter of users who completed setup use it daily; he forecast a greater-than-10x improvement in compute efficiency over the next year. Profitability still depends on those savings and revenue streams reaching scale, while premium access is intended for power users and most access will remain free.
More than a quarter of Muse users engaged in agent-based shopping had average purchase sizes above $200; this is not Meta’s revenue per user.
Zuckerberg said Plaid reported no comparable connector activity on another service; that comparison is his account of Plaid’s feedback.
Meta plans to keep Muse free for most users, retain a share of transactions, and charge for advanced models or higher token allowances.
Meta said on its October 21 third-quarter earnings call that more than 10 million people have adopted Muse, its AI agent. CEO Mark Zuckerberg called the service a product-market fit and outlined the next challenge: turning shopping and everyday tasks into revenue while reducing the substantial computing costs of running the agent.
The user figure confirms an estimate released earlier this week by market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, according to TechCrunch. Zuckerberg also supplied a measure of repeat use: about 25% of people who set up Muse now use it daily. That percentage concerns people who completed setup, rather than a share of shoppers or paying subscribers.
Zuckerberg said more than a quarter of Muse’s engaged users shopping through the agent had an average purchase size above $200. The figure describes a subset of shopping users; it is not an average purchase amount for everyone using Muse. It also measures purchases, not the revenue Meta earns from them.
Muse uses a connector from financial technology company Plaid to support shopping through the agent. Plaid connects payment apps with customers’ bank accounts. Zuckerberg said Plaid had told Meta it had not seen comparable connector activity on another service—an account of Plaid’s feedback, rather than a comparison supplied directly by Plaid.
Other popular uses include personal productivity, such as connecting Muse to email and calendars, Zuckerberg said. He interpreted those connections as evidence that people trust its security setup. That setup includes Muse Secure VM, which Meta describes as protecting users’ data and privacy.
In the near term, Muse is very compute-intensive to run, but we expect to improve its cost efficiency by more than 10x in the next year, which will enable it to be profitable once the revenue lines are at scale.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, on the third-quarter earnings call
With Zuckerberg declaring that Muse has found product-market fit, Meta’s stated focus is shifting toward scale, revenue and computing efficiency. Its monetization plan has two parts, while preserving free access for most users:
Zuckerberg’s longer-term revenue ambition is higher still. He said Meta expects Muse eventually to generate more revenue per user than its family of apps does today. He described that existing benchmark as several hundred dollars annually per user across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. The comparison is a forecast for Muse, not a current financial result.
Meta is building computing capacity to serve more than a billion people with Muse over the next few years, Zuckerberg said. That is a capacity goal, not the app’s current audience. His profitability forecast depends both on the promised efficiency gains and on revenue streams reaching scale.
The product roadmap also includes a forthcoming Muse Confidential VM, which Zuckerberg said would prevent even Meta from seeing users’ content. Separately, he described a planned Muse network where agents could work with those belonging to friends and family. For shopping, the envisioned agent would communicate with a business’s agent rather than simply navigate its website. These remain plans, not capabilities released on the earnings call.
Story updates
Meta’s third-quarter free cash flow turned negative even as revenue beat expectations, putting the immediate cost of its AI ambitions beside a stronger sales outlook. In its earnings update, the company raised its annual capital-spending floor to $135 billion, while CFO Susan Li put the start of additional AI-business revenue in 2027.
Third-quarter revenue reached $64.60 billion, ahead of the $63.37 billion analysts expected, according to LSEG data cited by CTech. Meta’s shares rose more than 4% in Wednesday’s after-hours trading.
For the fourth quarter, Meta forecast revenue of $73 billion to $76 billion. The midpoint of that range sits above analysts’ $73.73 billion expectation, although the lower end does not.
A legal charge complicated the earnings comparison. Meta reported earnings per share of $3.83, but said the figure would have been $7.40 without a $9.89 billion charge tied to an August settlement over youth-safety claims.
Meta lifted the lower end of its annual capital expenditure forecast from $130 billion to $135 billion, leaving the upper end at $145 billion. Capital expenditure covers investment in infrastructure, including the computing capacity behind its AI development.
Meta’s consumer AI agent, Muse, attracted more than 10 million users in the United States and Canada during its first six weeks, CTech reported. That early audience is central to Mark Zuckerberg’s approach: establish a network of users and businesses before charging broadly for access.
Zuckerberg argued that Muse will become more valuable as more people use it. He suggested it could eventually reach billions of users and generate more revenue per user than Meta’s average user today. Those are ambitions for the service, not results demonstrated by its first six weeks of adoption.
For now, Meta is prioritizing adoption over immediate monetization. But Zuckerberg also said Muse could be monetized sooner than the company’s typical new products because operating it is expensive.
Li’s 2027 revenue expectation applies to Meta’s AI businesses, not just Muse. She said those businesses could become a meaningful source of diversification over time for a company still heavily dependent on advertising.
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