Meta Platforms launched its personal consumer AI agent Muse on Tuesday, and early traction has triggered a sharp divide on Wall Street. Muse climbed to the number three spot in the U.S. App Store by its second day, after being designed to shop online, plan travel, purchase tickets, schedule appointments, manage calendars, and send emails and messages.
Meta stock rose 0.2% to $654.82 on Thursday, a day after gaining 6.6%, though it later gave back early gains to trade around $653. J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth upgraded Meta to Overweight from Neutral and raised the price target from $640 to $820, implying roughly 25% upside. Anmuth said Meta still has “meaningful upside potential” and described frontier models as “at the core of Meta’s product and monetization pipeline over a multi-year period.” He also noted possible future revenue from commissions, take-rates, subscriptions, and Model API access.
Evercore ISI reiterated Outperform with an $860 price target, citing a greater than 50% probability that Meta can roll out AI agents to consumers and small businesses. Evercore pointed to Meta’s 3.6 billion daily users and roughly 15 million small businesses on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. KeyBanc kept an Overweight rating with a $780 target, highlighting privacy and security, while Bernstein reiterated Outperform and said Meta is on track to surpass Google Search in advertising revenue this year.
Oppenheimer remained cautious, keeping a Perform rating. Analyst Jason Helfstein said Muse is unlikely to be a “game changer”, citing consumer subscription fatigue, competition from Alphabet’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and trust issues because Muse requires full password access to be useful for e-commerce. The Verge hands-on testing also highlighted concerns about how much personal information Muse can access. Meta’s gross profit margins stand at 81.75%, revenue growth at 27.65%, and Wall Street price targets range from $580 to $1,000.
