Meta Stock Surges 11% on Muse AI Hype and Investor Enthusiasm

Meta Platforms (META) shares climbed 11% Monday to end at $741.25. The price target from Wells Fargo was lifted to $796 from $640.

Early demand for Muse, Meta's latest AI agent, was mentioned by analyst Ken Gawrelski. According to him, it provides Meta with a believable AI narrative just before the Connect conference on Wednesday.

Muse Draws Attention on App Store Rankings

Muse was introduced by Meta on Sept. 8. Instead of purely answering queries, the AI agent handles tasks like form completion, appointment scheduling, and email dispatch. The underlying model family, Muse Spark, was created by Meta for agentic tasks.

Muse temporarily reached the top spot on Apple's US App Store free apps chart. Different tracking services reported different positions. Some ranked it fourth or fifth across all apps, while it secured second place in the Productivity category.

US iOS download estimates from analytics firm Sensor Tower indicated a rise from tens of thousands at launch to hundreds of thousands within a fortnight. Meta itself has not verified those numbers.

This represents a change following a period of AI model delays and significant infrastructure investment. At one point, those worries caused Wall Street to rotate out of Meta shares and into competitors, as previously reported.

Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, hired ex-Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang to overhaul Meta's AI lab. Analysts now link that decision to the debut of Muse.

Investors Favor Frontier AI Growth Over Safety Concerns

The stock surge comes amid ongoing debate about AI progress. Some critics question if the excitement exceeds actual risks. Zuckerberg has dismissed AI doomsday predictions, contending that rivalry among labs already regulates development.

Meta's goals have also been described more broadly by Zuckerberg. He believes superintelligence ought to be accessible to all, not confined to a few laboratories.

Monday's price action indicates that safety discussions have not dampened appetite for stocks linked to cutting-edge AI. The S&P 500 rose 1.49% to 7,764, and the Nasdaq Composite increased 2.26% to 27,122, but Meta's advance beat both indices. Alphabet (GOOGL) gained 1.55% to $354.97, while Snap (SNAP) climbed 3.07% to $5.70.

As Meta approaches the Connect conference on Wednesday, a central question remains: will Muse's initial excitement translate into actual usage figures, or remain confined to app store rankings? The answer may determine if the AI turnaround ultimately succeeds.