Zuckerberg: Muse Stays Free For Most People, With Meta Taking A Fee On Transactions
Meta's CEO said Muse is costly to run now but expects efficiency to improve by more than 10x in the next year.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the company's third-quarter earnings call that "for most people, the product should be free" for its Muse personal agent, with Meta paid a fee on transactions it helps facilitate. He said he expects businesses to cover that fee.
A free product with several revenue lines
Zuckerberg described the business model as having "a few components." Beyond commerce fees, people who want the most advanced models or extra tokens would subscribe directly, as would business owners and companies that want Muse for work.
A fourth piece covers people who connect Muse to their experiences across Meta to improve the personalization and quality of their content and ads.
Susan Li, Meta's chief financial officer, said shopping is used by over 25% of Muse weekly actives. Responding to an analyst at Evercore ISI, Zuckerberg said the 25% commerce figure includes travel.
The Evercore ISI analyst asked whether monetization has to come faster than Meta's usual playbook, given higher costs. Zuckerberg said Meta will work on it "somewhat sooner" because of the size of both the costs and the opportunity. He added that Meta is not charging everyone up front because it wants to build a Muse network that grows more valuable with scale.
Compute costs and the global rollout
Zuckerberg said Muse is "very compute intensive to run" in the near term, but Meta expects to improve its cost efficiency "by more than 10x in the next year." That, he said, would make it profitable once revenue lines are at scale.
He said more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada have set up Muse in its first six weeks. Muse has not launched globally, he said, partly because it is compute-intensive, and partly because Meta wants to optimize it for each place and build connectors.
Asked for per-user cost figures by an analyst, Li said Meta has no specific numbers to share. She named near-term levers: spare or off-peak computing capacity, smaller models and higher GPU utilization.
The spending around it
Li said 2026 capital expenditures are expected at $135 billion to $145 billion, narrowed from a prior range of $130 billion to $145 billion. Meta is not providing a full-year 2027 revenue outlook, though Li said AI gains position it to sustain strong revenue growth through 2027.
Reality Labs losses are expected to narrow next year to around $15 billion as investment shifts toward AI, Li said. Third-quarter free cash flow was negative $2.1 billion.
The company has not given 2027 revenue guidance; Li said Meta is still early in building its 2027 budget and capacity plans.
Sources
- Meta (META) Q3 2026 earnings report: Live updates — CNBC
- Meta Platforms Says Family Daily Active Peop... — benzinga.com
- Meta Stock Higher After Q3 Earnings. Here Are The Numbers To Know. | Investor's Business Daily — investors.com
- Meta Platforms CEO Says More Than 10M People ... — benzinga.com
- Why Meta didn't offer 2027 revenue guidance: Q3 earnings takeaways — Yahoo Finance
