Mark Zuckerberg bets on Meta’s AI agent Muse to reach more than 1 billion users, overtake social media revenue

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is betting Meta’s next billion users will not come to the company for another social network but, instead, for an AI agent that can handle the mundane tasks of everyday life.

Zuckerberg said Meta’s Muse AI agent could eventually be used by more than 1 billion people and generate more revenue per user than Instagram or the company’s other advertising-funded platforms.

The ambition marks a significant shift for Meta, which still makes more than 90 per of its revenue by monetising the attention of its social media users via advertising sales.

Zuckerberg is positioning Muse and AI as a potentially more lucrative business in its own right, even as the cost of providing the computing power required to run advanced models remains a major constraint.

For the September quarter, Meta reported revenues jumped 26 per cent to $US64.6 billion ($91b).

But investors are increasingly looking beyond the company’s advertising performance to assess what share of the emerging market for AI services it can capture.

Meta launched Muse in North America on September 8 and it has quickly amassed more than 10 million users, with around one-in-four using it on any given day.

The agent can be given a personalised name and instructed to perform tasks including booking appointments, searching for online deals, or responding to emails and shopping online.

“Now that Muse has a clear market fit we are entering a new and operational phase that is focused on scaling it,” said Zuckerberg.

“The goals for this next phase play to many of Meta’s strengths. We need to do three things, scale the product, grow revenue and optimise compute costs.”

Muse is free for most users, although offers $US20 ($28) and $US100 ($142) monthly subscription plans for people who use a lot of AI tokens or computing capacity.

Zuckerberg said Meta plans to make Muse free globally, with the huge cost of supplying the required computing power borne by the business.

The cost and competition to secure AI compute has dominated share markets through 2026, with Zuckerberg suggesting he expects Muse to turn profitable once costs fall.

“If compute efficiency continues improving quickly for another few years, which we think is highly likely, then Muse will be highly profitable over multiple years,” he said.

The existing limitation on the agent’s roll-out is that Meta doesn’t have enough compute to serve its target of 1 billion-plus people.

“Because this (Muse) is a compute intensive service to run we’ve not launched it globally yet,” said Zuckerberg.

AI compute shortages have also hit rivals such as OpenAI and ChatGPT, which offer the rival Codex and Claude agents on mainly subscription bases.

Investors have yet to settle on how to value the potential of Muse to generate revenue, versus the enormous capital expenditures required to deliver it. Meta shares swung sharply in futures trading as Zuckerberg outlined his ambition for Muse to reach the world in a similar way to Instagram.

Meta critics, online scams

Zuckerberg’s AI push comes as the social media pioneer continues to face scrutiny over its handling of privacy, online scams and the impact of its platforms on younger users.

Despite its billions of dollars in profits and tech expertise, it has been unable to prevent scam ads in Australia that regularly impersonate public figures in an attempt to defraud users.

Australia’s big bank chief executives have complained they’re left to foot the bill of the frauds via compensation to customers and increased investments in scam education, while Meta has sought to shift the blame to organised crime in Cambodia it has no control over.

On Wednesday morning, a judge in the US state of New Mexico ordered it to pay a $US25b ($35.6b) fine after a jury found the company had misled consumers around privacy protections.

Meta also booked a $US9.9b ($14.1) fine in its September accounts over a settlement it reached with 52 US attorney generals for compensation related to privacy breaches and social media harms on teenagers.

Zuckerberg skipped any commentary around its legal woes on Wednesday’s earnings call, instead focusing on his vision to bring artificial intelligence to billions of people.

That strategy extends beyond software. Another part of it is Meta’s wearable AI glasses, which are posting sharp rises in sales.

“People already love many features of the glasses; music, calling, capturing moments, hearing assistance, and more,” Zuckerberg said.

“But over time, we expect Muse and having your personal superintelligence with you throughout the day will be the most important part of the experience.”

The glasses have also attracted critics for invading the privacy of subjects being recorded or photographed without their knowledge.

The scale of Meta’s existing audience gives Zuckerberg a formidable distribution advantage over rivals.

It had 3.64 billion people use at least one of WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram or Threads each day in September and has the deep pockets to monetise their attention more.