In ten days, the company that supposedly LOST the AI race knocked ChatGPT off the top of the App Store.
The app is called Muse.
Meta launched it on September 8th, and by September 18th it was the number one free app in the US.
Muse is what the tech world calls an AI agent… meaning you connect it to your accounts and it does jobs on your behalf.
One early user, says he uploaded his car insurance policy and asked Muse to find the same coverage for less. It found a policy that saves him $3,500 a year and made the switch in about five minutes.
On Monday, Meta stock jumped more than 11%… meaning the shares are now up more than 30% in a month.
But let’s rewind to July when the narrative wasn’t so rosey…
Meta told investors it would spend up to $145 billion on capex this year. Most of this will be on data centers and chips to build and run AI.
The stock sank…
When I wrote to you after earnings it was 25% below its highs, and one commentator was claiming Zuckerberg was turning Meta into the next Yahoo.
I titled that email "Everyone is wrong on Meta (part 17)"
My argument was that the ad business was still growing… and Meta could turn off the capex faucet whenever it wanted.
What's left underneath is an extremely profitable company.
And what I kept coming back to was distribution…
Meta's apps are used by 3.6 billion people every. single. day.
Meta can put a new app inside WhatsApp or Instagram, and a large chunk of humanity already opens them before breakfast.
OpenAI can't do that... neither can Anthropic…
And it's why a data center bill that looked reckless in July suddenly looks like the price of entry.
Muse could still stumble... but the "Meta is wasting its money" crowd just lost their best argument.
I first recommended Meta at $99 back in October 2022. This week it traded around $740. And I still remain bullish.
Oliver