September 24, 2026, (Inside AI) — Meta's new AI agent app, Muse, has become the fastest consumer AI product to reshape US stock market fortunes this year, triggering sharp selloffs across financials, travel, and subscription services while lifting Meta and its infrastructure partners. The app, the first major release under Meta's AI chief Alexandr Wang, recorded 2.8 million downloads within two weeks of launch and overtook ChatGPT as the top free app on Apple's App Store and Google Play Store in the US and Canada.
Muse allows users to delegate shopping, travel booking, and form-filling to an AI agent. Its rapid adoption has investors betting on a fundamental shift in how consumers discover and purchase services, with clear winners and losers emerging across sectors.
Meta's shares have soared nearly 13% this week, set for their fifth-straight week of gains. Truist Securities estimates Muse could generate at least $28.5 billion in annual revenue by fiscal 2030. The stock rally reflects confidence that Meta has found a mainstream consumer application for AI that can monetize at scale.
The app's success has also boosted AI infrastructure plays. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index has gained 7% since Muse's launch, with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices among top gainers. The logic is straightforward: more AI agents mean more compute demand, accelerating data center buildouts.
Read: Meta Tests Human Concierge for AI Assistant Muse, Raising Privacy Concerns
Shopify's US-listed shares jumped 11.4% this week after the company said it would use Muse to process checkouts. PayPal edged higher after allowing users to discover products and complete purchases through the agent. Privately held Stripe and Ticketmaster also struck similar deals with Meta.
"Meta has really found lightning in a bottle here and someone who partners with Muse is likely to be a clear beneficiary off the bat to me. As far as net losers, it's just going to take more time to find out," said Michael O'Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading.
Financial stocks bore the brunt of the selloff. JPMorgan and Wells Fargo each lost more than 3% this week, while brokerage Charles Schwab fell nearly 5%. Insurers Marsh and Arthur J. Gallagher dropped 2.4% and 4.6%, respectively. The fear: Muse could prompt users to switch to cheaper policies or financial products with minimal friction.
Travel and subscription-based businesses also took hits. TripAdvisor and Booking Holdings lost over 6% this week. Planet Fitness tanked 17%, and The New York Times fell 10%. Ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft, along with food marketplace DoorDash, also declined.
Not everyone sees the disruption as inevitable. Art Hogan, chief market strategist for B. Riley Wealth, argued the concerns are overblown.
"If you're going to trust the management of your finances to something that Muse found for you, then you were likely not a big payer to anyone in that industry to begin with. There's a whole lot more that goes in asset management than who's got the cheapest price," he said.
Hogan's point cuts to a deeper question: does an AI agent that optimizes for price actually erode brand loyalty, or does it simply serve a segment of consumers who were already price-sensitive? The market's reaction suggests investors are betting on the former, but the long-term evidence is not yet in.
Muse's rise also raises competitive questions for OpenAI, Google, and Amazon, all of which have been developing agentic AI products. Meta's advantage lies in its distribution: billions of existing users across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. That scale could make Muse the default AI agent for mainstream consumers, much as ChatGPT became the default chatbot.
The app's average daily download growth of 55% in its first 10 days, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, suggests strong early traction. But sustaining that growth will depend on whether Muse can deliver reliable, trustworthy results across complex tasks like insurance comparison or travel booking, where errors carry real costs.
For now, the market is pricing in a future where AI agents reshape consumer behavior. Meta's challenge will be proving that Muse can convert downloads into durable revenue without triggering regulatory or privacy backlash. The winners and losers of this shift are still being sorted out, but the early signals are unmistakable.
