Meta’s Muse is already making a strong first impression. For business use, Claude may still be the better fit. For personal use, though, Muse is quickly becoming a favorite because it feels useful, connected, and accessible to almost anyone.
The most surprising part is the price: Muse is free for the vast majority of users.
That raises the obvious question: what is really in it for Meta?
we just launched invite codes in @Muse !
— Alexandr Wang (@alexandr_wang) September 16, 2026
if your friends use your invite code when signing up, both of you get 🎉1 BILLION TOKENS EACH🎉 for up to 20 friends!
and if you invite all 20 friends, you’ll get early access to our newest features (like 📞☎️🤫 and more!) pic.twitter.com/MzDWwLy0ux
Right now, Meta appears to be prioritizing adoption. The company is not meaningfully monetizing the core experience beyond paid subscription tiers designed largely for power users and the compute they consume. That does not mean there is no business model. It means the business model may come later, after Muse has enough users, context, and daily relevance to create several new revenue streams.
Here is where the opportunity could be.
1. A new layer of data for ad targeting
The most valuable thing Muse may collect is not a single prompt. It is the context surrounding a user’s life.
When people connect an AI assistant to their inbox, calendar, payments, files, and other tools, the assistant can become aware of the products they buy, the trips they plan, the newsletters they read, the work they do, and the problems they are trying to solve right now.
That is an unusually rich behavioral picture. It is also much more personal than a typical social interaction or browsing signal.
Meta says Muse data is not being used in its advertising system, at least for now. That qualifier matters. If the company eventually finds a way to use this information within its ad infrastructure, its already sophisticated targeting system could become even more precise.
Imagine advertising informed not only by what someone likes, follows, or clicks, but by what they are actively planning, researching, buying, or struggling with. That would create a dramatically different level of intent data.
Of course, this is also where privacy concerns become unavoidable. The value of Muse depends on trust, and trust becomes harder to maintain when an assistant has access to the most sensitive parts of a person’s digital life. Any future use of this data would need clear limits, meaningful user control, and a transparent explanation of what is being collected and why.
2. A new home for advertising
Muse could also create an entirely new advertising environment for Meta.
The company has spent years building massive audiences across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Muse gives it another surface where users may spend time, ask questions, compare options, and make decisions.
That creates opportunities for sponsored recommendations, promoted results, branded assistants, and other formats that do not look like traditional feed ads.
This probably will not happen immediately. Meta’s first priority is likely to be making Muse useful enough that people return to it regularly. Advertising too early could undermine the experience before the product has earned user trust.
But if Muse becomes a daily destination, the incentive to introduce commercial placements will be difficult to ignore. The question will not be whether ads appear, but what they look like and whether users can tell when an answer has been influenced by a sponsor.
3. Commerce transaction fees
Muse is already positioned to help with personal shopping. A user can ask for product recommendations, compare options, find the right size or price, and potentially complete a purchase without leaving the assistant.
That puts Muse much closer to the point of transaction than a traditional social platform.
As far as we know, Muse is not currently taking a cut from Shopify merchants on transactions it helps facilitate. But if the product can prove that it drives incremental revenue for brands, a commerce fee could become a logical next step.
Meta would not necessarily need to charge for access to Muse. It could monetize the actions Muse enables: product discovery, referrals, checkout, subscriptions, travel bookings, and other purchases.
That model would align the company’s revenue with the value it creates for brands, while keeping the assistant free for users.
The bigger strategic shift
The important point is that Muse does not need to become a traditional subscription software product for Meta to win.
Meta can use Muse to deepen its understanding of users, create new advertising inventory, and move closer to the moment when a user makes a purchase. The free product is what makes the system grow. The monetization opportunities come from everything that happens after adoption.
That is why this is such an interesting moment for AI assistants. The competition is not only about which model writes the best answer. It is also about who can become the most useful layer between people and the rest of the internet.
The assistant that knows what you need, what you are considering, and what you are ready to buy could become one of the most valuable products in the world.
For users, the tradeoff will be convenience versus control. For advertisers, it could mean a new generation of intent signals. For Meta, Muse may be the beginning of a much larger business than a paid AI subscription.
Exciting times, but also a good reason to pay close attention to the permissions we grant and the business models behind the tools we use every day.
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