Zuckerberg’s expensive AI reset is starting to make sense
When Meta (NASDAQ: META) committed $14.3 billion to Scale AI in 2025 and brought founder Alexandr Wang into the company, the price immediately raised eyebrows.
Meta was trying to close ground in an AI race dominated by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Zuckerberg responded by spending aggressively on talent, infrastructure and a new AI organization, effectively betting that getting the right people inside Meta was worth billions.
A little more than a year later, investors are beginning to see what that spending was intended to produce.
Meta’s new Muse AI agent has reached 2.8 million downloads in its first 12 days across the U.S. and Canadian App Stores, according to Sensor Tower. Its early adoption has even surpassed ChatGPT’s original launch:
- Muse: 2.8 million downloads in its first 12 days
- ChatGPT: 1.3 million downloads over the comparable period
- Muse U.S. daily record: 264,000 downloads on Sept. 19
- Meta market value added over five trading days: roughly $234 billion
The $14.3 billion investment suddenly looks very different when Meta is producing an AI product consumers are actively downloading at scale.
Muse could become much more than another chatbot
Meta has something most AI startups do not: billions of users already spread across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.
Muse gives the company an opportunity to place an AI agent directly on top of that distribution.
The company is already expanding the idea into commerce. PayPal announced an integration allowing Muse agents to help customers shop online, while Zuckerberg has said Meta expects to collect a small fee from transactions completed through the agent.
Meta Connect also showed how much broader the strategy has become.
The company unveiled the Muse Charm, a pocket-sized device designed around voice interaction with Muse, alongside new $1,299 spatial-computing glasses and another generation of Ray-Ban smart glasses. Rather than treating AI as another feature inside its existing apps, Meta increasingly appears to be building products around the agent itself.
If Muse becomes the interface people use to search, shop, communicate and interact with digital services, Meta gains another way to monetize its enormous existing user base.
Meta is trying to own both the AI and the device around it
The hardware push may eventually become just as important as Muse.
Meta’s newest devices suggest Zuckerberg wants AI to move beyond the phone and into products people carry or wear throughout the day. Its new VR glasses weigh only about 100 grams, while the latest Ray-Ban lineup pushes Meta further into lightweight, always-available AI interfaces.
That creates a potentially powerful combination: Meta can develop the model, distribute the agent through its existing apps, connect it to commerce and build the hardware through which users eventually access it.
The strategy is still early, but Meta has moved from looking late to the generative AI race to becoming one of the companies shaping what consumer AI could actually look like.
And that brings the Scale AI deal back into focus.
Zuckerberg did not spend $14.3 billion simply to acquire another technology asset. He spent it to bring talent, leadership and urgency into Meta’s AI effort.
Muse’s early traction is the first strong indication that the bet may be working.
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