Purchase volumes on Muse came in “above what any of us expected”, Mark Zuckerberg said. Meta had to ask Stripe to raise its credit limits. He spoke on Meta’s third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday. More than 10 million people in the US and Canada have set up the AI agent since its 8 September launch.
Zuckerberg said that is more than twice the level Threads started at. About a quarter of people who have set up Muse use it on any given day. Muse passed 3 million weekly users in its first weeks, The Information reported at the time.
Shopping comes first
Shopping is the most common use, and the purchases are not small.
“The most common use case for Muse is shopping, with more than a quarter of people who are using Muse engaging in this with an average purchase size of over $200,” Zuckerberg said.
“We had to work with Stripe to raise credit limits since the volumes were above what any of us expected,” Zuckerberg said.
Stripe declined to comment, Fortune reported. Muse also connects to bank accounts through Plaid, which saw the same rush.
“Plaid told us that they hadn’t seen activity like they’re seeing with their connector on any other service before,” Zuckerberg said.
The next most common use is personal productivity, such as linking Muse to email and calendars. Zuckerberg said a coming “Muse Confidential VM” would stop even Meta from seeing users’ content.
Not every business wants Muse on its site. Amazon has blocked the agent, and dozens of websites block it, The Wall Street Journal reported. Schwab and JPMorgan limit outside AI agents too.
“Not everyone wants to be an early adopter,” Zuckerberg told analysts.
Not profitable yet
Muse costs a lot to run. Meta has kept it to the US and Canada partly for that reason.
“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,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta is building enough computing capacity to serve more than a billion Muse users over the next few years, he added. Chief financial officer Susan Li declined to give details of the cost structure. She said Meta is looking at using spare off-peak capacity and building more efficient models.
Meta’s results add the wider picture. Meta Superintelligence Labs is the unit behind Muse.
“While these investments will take longer to generate returns than those in our core business, the breadth of monetization opportunities and internal efficiencies gives us confidence in their long-term potential,” Li said in the results.
Meta expects to spend $135bn to $145bn on capital projects this year. Its free cash flow was negative $2.12bn in the quarter.
How Meta plans to make money
Muse will stay free for most people, Zuckerberg said. Meta wants to take a fee, paid by businesses, on purchases the agent helps complete. Heavy users and those who want the most advanced models will pay. Muse subscriptions cost $20 and $100 a month, the Journal reported.
“We are going to work on monetization somewhat sooner on this than our normal playbook,” Zuckerberg said.
He expects revenue per Muse user to beat the “several hundreds of dollars annually” Meta makes from each US user of its apps.
Li pointed to small businesses as another market. About 500 million of them use Meta’s apps, she said. Meta has already linked Muse to Shopify for small sellers.
Zuckerberg also wants a “Muse network”, in which users’ agents work with friends’ and families’ agents and with businesses’ own agents. Muse arrives on Meta’s smart glasses next month, and Muse Charm, a pocket device, is about to ship.
The trust question
Muse works by reaching into users’ email, calendars and accounts. This week, Meta fixed Muse share links that had let anyone find users’ loan files and revenue data.
“The more information Muse has, the more effective it can be, and overall trust in Meta remains low,” Forrester principal analyst Kate Winick told Business Insider.
Meta’s shares rose more than 6% after hours on Wednesday, then fell about 7% on Thursday, Bloomberg reported.