Meta wants Muse to do your shopping. What that changes for anyone who sells online

What you get from this article

• Muse launched on September 8, 2026 in the United States and passed 2.5 million downloads in 13 days, according to Sensor Tower.
• At Connect, Meta showed US$ 1,299.99 virtual reality glasses for 2027, an audio-only Ray-Ban for US$ 349 and the Muse Charm keychain.
• Walmart, Gap, Wayfair and seven other retailers joined as partners. Amazon blocked the agent on September 20.
• Meta stock rose 35.9% from the end of August to September 24 and fell 3.3% the next day, after a Goldman Sachs warning about the payback on AI spending.
• In August, Meta itself disclosed that one of its models broke into an outside company's system during a security test.
• For sellers: a catalog machines can read, a written policy for agents and separate measurement of what comes from them.

What Muse is, and why it is not just another chatbot

Muse is the personal AI agent from Meta ($META ▲ 0.07%), launched on September 8, 2026 in the United States, for iPhone and Android. The difference from an assistant that only talks is the verb: it acts. It goes into the store, builds the cart, pays with the wallet you authorized, books the meeting, answers the message. This is what is called agentic AI: you hand over a goal, not a question.

The start was fast. According to Sensor Tower data published by CNBC, Muse had about 730,000 downloads in its first five days and passed 2.5 million on September 21, with 1.5 million on iPhone and 1.1 million on Android. In Sensor Tower's own comparison over a 13-day period, ChatGPT had 3.1 million, Claude 400,000 and Grok 200,000. On September 18, Muse overtook ChatGPT at the top of the free iPhone apps in the United States.

These numbers have a limit, and it is worth saying which: a download is not usage. A new Meta app is born with a distribution advantage no competitor has, because it can be promoted inside Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp. The number that will say whether Muse caught on is how many people are still using it three months from now, and that number does not exist yet.

At Connect, Meta announced two more things that show where the product is heading. Muse will get its own email address, so you can copy it into a thread and hand off the task, and it will run any app on the Mac. In the words of Alexandr Wang, Meta's chief AI officer, you can walk away from your computer and it keeps working on the jobs you lined up.

A chatbot answers. An agent does. And whoever does the shopping needs three things a chatbot never had: access to the store, to your wallet and to your password.

What Meta launched at Connect 2026

Connect, Meta's annual conference, took place on September 23, 2026. Mark Zuckerberg opened by calling Muse "the centerpiece" of what the company is building and said he expects it to become the personal superintelligence used by billions of people. The devices announced revolve around that: they are different ways to talk to the agent without picking up your phone.

The most expensive are the Meta VR Glasses, virtual reality glasses weighing about 100 grams (Meta itself compares them to a deck of cards), with a 5K micro-OLED display and a pocket puck that holds Qualcomm's Snapdragon Reality Elite processor, the battery and the storage. They cost US$ 1,299.99 and go on sale in spring 2027. They are not glasses for the street: they are for movies, games and work across several virtual screens, and Meta says they are the first VR device with IMAX Enhanced certification.

Price is the bet. Samsung's Galaxy XR costs US$ 1,799.99 on Samsung's own website, and Apple's ($AAPL ▼ 0.42%) Vision Pro starts at US$ 3,699 since Apple raised prices in June 2026. The CNN report that circulated in Brazil gives US$ 1,700 for the Galaxy XR; the price on Samsung's site is different. Samsung Electronics has no card here because it trades on the Korea Exchange under the code 005930, which Pense Mercado does not cover.

In the everyday line, made with EssilorLuxottica (traded on Euronext Paris under the code EL), came the Ray-Ban Meta Audio, with no camera at all: just microphone and speakers, 43 grams, up to 12 hours of battery, US$ 349 and shipping from October 13. The camera version, the third-generation Ray-Ban Meta, went on sale the same day for US$ 449. For Brazil, Meta says its own-brand glasses line is coming "soon", with no date.

Finally, the Muse Charm: an object the size of a keychain for talking to the agent without unlocking your phone or opening an app. Meta gave no price or specifications and promised details by the end of the year; according to CNN, the plan is to launch before the holiday shopping season.

Walmart in, Amazon out

The part of the announcement that matters most to sellers is the list of stores. Meta's official announcement lists as Muse partners Walmart ($WMT ▼ 0.63%), Gap ($GAP ▲ 5.18%) and Wayfair ($W ▲ 0.49%), as well as Best Buy, American Eagle, DICK'S Sporting Goods, Fanatics, Michael Kors, Sephora and Ulta. It pays with Shop Pay and PayPal, does groceries through Instacart, reaches the Shopify store catalog and will have Expedia soon.

The CNN report, which reached Brazil through CNN Brasil, also names GameStop ($GME ▼ 0.04%), which does not appear on the list Meta published. And the Portuguese translation attributed the store expansion to Amazon. In the English original, the one expanding is Meta, and Amazon shows up in the next sentence for the opposite reason.

On the night of September 20, three days before Connect, Amazon ($AMZN ▲ 0.10%) started blocking Muse. People trying to shop through the agent saw a notice that access by an unauthorized AI agent violates the store's conditions of use, according to GeekWire, which broke the story. Amazon gave three reasons: Meta did not say the agent would access the store, Muse does not identify itself when it browses, and it appears to store customer credentials.

Meta replied that Muse has no visibility into passwords or payment methods, and that credentials sit in secure storage the agent uses without reading. It is not Amazon's first fight with a shopping agent: in November 2025 it sued Perplexity over the same issue, and the dispute ended up in US courts.

Two of the largest retailers in the world looked at the same agent and decided opposite things. Neither is wrong: each one defended the way it makes money.

Why Amazon closes the door and Walmart opens it

The decision is about business model, not technology. At Amazon, the product page is where ads are sold, the next item is suggested and the customer is reminded of the subscription. An agent that walks in, buys and leaves sees none of that. For a company that profits from the customer's attention inside the store, the agent is a middleman that keeps the relationship.

For Walmart, which is chasing Amazon in e-commerce, being where the customer is already talking is a chance to win an order that would otherwise go to the competitor. That reading is ours, not the companies': neither explained its decision in those terms. But it helps predict how other stores will behave. Those who live on their own traffic tend to close; those who need a new channel tend to open.

Then there is the question of who pays. Zuckerberg said at Connect that Muse stays free and that Meta will profit by taking "a small fee from transactions". In the sources we checked, there is no published percentage or billing rule. For a merchant, that is the point to watch: if the agent becomes a sales channel with a commission, it goes into the margin math the same way a marketplace does today.

How Meta stock reacted

In the market, September was the month of Muse. Meta stock closed August at US$ 572.34 and reached US$ 777.59 on September 24, up 35.9% in less than a month, according to Pense Mercado price data. The biggest jump came on Monday, September 21: up 11.3%, the day Wells Fargo raised its price target from US$ 640 to US$ 796 and Muse was at the top of the App Store.

Connect day itself was quiet, up 1% to close at US$ 744.10, because Zuckerberg's keynote came late in the afternoon. The gain came the next day, up 4.5%. On Friday, September 25, the stock fell 3.3% to US$ 751.66, after a Goldman Sachs report questioned whether the companies spending the most on AI infrastructure will earn enough to pay for it.

It is the same point that weighed in July. In its second-quarter report on July 29, Meta narrowed its 2026 capital expenditure outlook to US$ 130 billion to US$ 145 billion and guided total expenses of US$ 165 billion to US$ 169 billion for the year. In the next session the stock fell 8%, from US$ 585.61 to US$ 539.03. Muse is, among other things, Meta's first concrete answer to the question of where the return on that money will come from.

The cards throughout this article show the price and chart of each company mentioned that trades in the United States, with Pense Mercado data delayed by 15 minutes. Investors in Brazil can also find Meta as a BDR on B3, under the code M1TA34. Nothing here is investment advice: the goal is to show how the market priced each piece of news.

The other side: privacy, and agents that step out of line

Camera glasses face concrete pushback, not just opinion. Since July 20, 2026, New York State courts have banned eyewear and headwear with cameras or microphones from all their buildings, more than 1,240 of them. In August, Brisbane, in Australia, banned filming people without consent with smart glasses at the city's 21 public pools. And CNN reported in February on cases where the glasses were used to film women and post the videos online without consent.

The Ray-Ban with no camera is, in practice, Meta's answer to that: it keeps the assistant on your face and removes the reason for the ban. It does not solve the camera models, which are still on sale, but it gives the company a product for the places that closed the door.

The second risk comes from the agent itself. On August 5, Meta disclosed that Muse Spark 1.1, one of its own AI models, broke into an outside company's system during a security test. A misconfiguration at Irregular, the firm hired to run the tests, let the model reach the internet, and it exploited a flaw in a third-party service "in a manner similar" to cases previously reported by other companies. It is the same kind of episode that led the heads of Anthropic and OpenAI to call for slowing the pace of AI.

There is no indication the incident has anything to do with the Muse app. But it helps explain Amazon's distrust. An agent that shops on someone's behalf needs credentials, and credentials in the hands of an agent are exactly what these tests showed to be hard to contain.

It is not only Meta

Several companies are racing at the same time. The CNN report mentions Google ($GOOGL ▼ 0.22%), whose Gemini Samsung built into its own glasses, and Snap ($SNAP ▲ 0.19%), which is betting on augmented reality glasses for the post-smartphone era. Among agents, the same report compares Muse to OpenAI's Codex, Anthropic's Claude and OpenClaw, an open-source agent that runs on the user's own computer.

OpenAI and Anthropic are not publicly traded, and OpenClaw is an open project run by a foundation. What the listed companies have in common is the bet that the next interface is not an app screen but a conversation with an agent that acts.

For sellers, that means the problem is not Muse itself. If it is not Muse, it will be another agent, and each one will have its own list of partner stores, its own payment method and its own fee. It pays to prepare for the behavior, not the brand.

What changes for online sellers in Brazil

For now, Muse is American. The question for a Brazilian store is not whether agents will buy from it, but on what terms it wants to be found by them when they arrive. The good news is that the preparation is almost entirely the same work that already helps you show up on Google and get cited by an AI.

It is the same work that gets a company cited by ChatGPT, which we explain in how your company gets cited by ChatGPT and Gemini: clear, verifiable information that is easy to extract. The agent just swaps the citation for the purchase.

In practice, five things are already worth doing, and none of them depends on Muse arriving in Brazil:

• A catalog machines can read. Price, stock, shipping and delivery time in text on the page and in product structured data, not only in images. Agents do not read banners.
• A written policy for agents. Decide whether your store accepts purchases made by agents and say so in your terms of use and in robots.txt. Amazon showed that blocking is an option; Walmart showed that opening up is too.
• Payment the agent can use. Muse pays with Shop Pay and PayPal. A store that only closes sales through its own form is left out of agent shopping.
• Separate measurement. Split out in your analytics the traffic that comes from agents and AI assistants. Without that, you will not know whether the channel exists for your business.
• The fee in your margin math. If the agent becomes a channel with a commission, it goes into your pricing the same way a marketplace does.

What to watch in the coming months

Part of the calendar is already set. Ray-Ban Meta Audio starts shipping on October 13, Muse Charm should get a price and date by the end of the year, Meta VR Glasses arrive in spring 2027, and Meta's glasses line has been announced for Brazil as coming "soon".

The most important dispute, though, has no date. The fight between stores and agents will decide whether a store can block a robot acting on behalf of its own customer, and the dispute with Perplexity is already in US courts. Until that is settled, each retailer will pick a side according to how it makes money.

In the market, Meta's next quarterly report will show whether spending stays within the promised range and, for the first time, include Muse for a full quarter. After a rally of more than a third in under a month and a 3.3% drop in a single day, the stock has made clear the market is still deciding what an AI that shops is worth.

Frequently asked questions

What is Meta's Muse?

It is Meta's personal AI agent, launched on September 8, 2026 in the United States, for iPhone and Android. Instead of only answering, it carries out tasks: it shops at partner stores, pays with the wallet you authorized, manages calendar and messages and, according to Meta, will run apps on the Mac and get its own email address.

Does Muse work in Brazil yet?

The September 8 launch was in the United States, and the partner stores announced are American. What Meta announced for Brazil as coming soon, with no date, was its own-brand glasses line, not the shopping agent.

Why did Amazon block Muse?

According to GeekWire, Amazon said Meta did not tell it the agent would access the store, that Muse does not identify itself when it browses and that it appears to store customer credentials. Meta replied that the agent does not see passwords or payment methods. Behind it is the business model: Amazon's product page is where it sells ads and suggests other items, and an agent skips that step.

How much do Meta's new glasses cost?

Meta VR Glasses, for virtual reality, cost US$ 1,299.99 and go on sale in spring 2027. Ray-Ban Meta Audio, with no camera, costs US$ 349 and starts shipping on October 13. The third-generation Ray-Ban Meta, with a camera, starts at US$ 449. Prices are for the United States.

How did Meta stock react to the Muse launch?

It rose 35.9% from the end of August to September 24, with an 11.3% jump on September 21, and fell 3.3% on September 25 after a Goldman Sachs report questioned the return on AI investment. These are closing prices, and none of this is investment advice.

What should a small store do now?

Make price, stock, shipping and delivery time readable in text and structured data, decide and write down whether it accepts purchases made by agents, offer digital wallet payment and separate in analytics the traffic that comes from AI assistants. It is the same foundation that already helps you show up on Google and get cited by AI.

Sources

• Meta, The biggest news from Connect 2026 (Sep 24, 2026)
• Meta, Introducing Meta VR Glasses (Sep 23, 2026)
• Meta, Introducing Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, new styles plus Muse (Sep 23, 2026)
• Meta, Meta Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results (Jul 29, 2026)
• Meta Research, Addressing an issue involving third-party cyber testing (Aug 2026)
• CNN Brasil, Meta está apostando alto em seu agente de IA Muse com novos dispositivos (Sep 26, 2026)
• GeekWire, Amazon blocks Meta's Muse AI assistant in new standoff over agentic shopping (Sep 2026)
• CNBC, Meta's Muse AI agent downloads are surging (Sep 21, 2026)
• TechCrunch, Everything new coming to Meta's AI agent Muse (Sep 23, 2026)
• Samsung, Galaxy XR (price checked Sep 27, 2026)
• MacRumors, Apple Vision Pro Just Got Even More Expensive (Jun 25, 2026)
• New York State Unified Court System, memo on the smart glasses ban (Jul 2026)
• ABC News, Brisbane City Council bans the use of smart glasses to secretly film in public pools (Aug 25, 2026)
• Yahoo Finance, Meta stock soars 11% on price target increase, Muse AI downloads (Sep 21, 2026)
• The Motley Fool, Why Meta Platforms Stock Reversed Today (Sep 25, 2026)
• Pense Mercado, META price and history

Rodrigo Fávaro

Founder of ROO3, a marketing and technology agency in São José do Rio Preto, Brazil. Builds AI products running in production (Tobia, gerar.app, Pense Mercado) and maintains the AI Benchmark, a public ranking of AI models. See ROO3 AI consulting.

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