The social media giant's latest personal AI assistant has overtaken ChatGPT as the top free app in the U.S. and Canada to reach a wider audience than rival tools at launch. Meta's Muse has officially crossed the 5 million user mark as of Sept. 30, according to Sensor Tower senior analyst Kara Lee. In its first 12 days, the agent recorded 1.8 million downloads and 642,000 daily active users, exceeding ChatGPT's initial counts of 1.3 million downloads and 231,000 DAUs. Canaccord recently raised its price target for Meta to $950, pointing to the app's 2.8 million downloads within two weeks and expansion to Mac, wearables, and dedicated hardware as keys to transaction-based monetization.

The growth of agentic AI has triggered a broader rally in semiconductors, with Arm shares rising 17%, Intel jumping 12.2%, and AMD climbing 9.95% on expectations of higher CPU demand. Arm CEO Rene Haas noted that AI agents require more CPU cores than traditional chatbots because they manage general asynchronous tasks and utilize over 15 times more tokens than humans. Meta shares rose 12.9% last week, placing the stock within 5% of its all-time high, while the Nasdaq 100 closed at a record high as investors re-evaluated the infrastructure needs of the agent-led AI cycle.