Meta Platforms shares surged more than 6% on Monday following an overnight launch of its consumer AI assistant Muse, which hit notable early adoption milestones and pulled the Nasdaq 100 upward. Semiconductors and broader technology names led the advance.
Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski raised his price target on Meta from $640 to $796, citing what he described as a fundamental shift in the AI-assistant landscape. "I believe Muse assistant and Instinct mark the transition to consumer AI assistants from chatbots," Gawrelski wrote in a note issued alongside the day's trading.
The stock gains extended well beyond Meta. Arm Holdings surged 15%, Intel jumped 13%, and AMD climbed 9%, underscoring investor enthusiasm for the AI narrative. The Nasdaq 100 lifted 2.15% as technology holdings dominated trading.
Data from SensorTower showed Muse recording 264,000 U.S. downloads on September 19 — its strongest single-day total to date — and maintaining downloads above 200,000 for three consecutive days. On September 18, the app posted a peak of 448,000 daily active users in the U.S., just 10 days after launch.
The rollout pace stands in sharp contrast to ChatGPT's early trajectory. According to SensorTower, ChatGPT required nearly a full year to cross the 200,000-daily-U.S.-downloads threshold and took 49 days to reach 450,000 daily active users.
Vital Knowledge also published research on Monday, though its specific findings were not detailed in available reports. The Nasdaq 100 settled near 29,644, reflecting the broad-based advance in tech and semiconductors.
All eyes now turn toward Wednesday night's keynote address by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the company's annual Meta Connect conference, where further details about Meta's AI roadmap are expected.
Meta's underlying AI models powering Muse are referred to internally as "Muse Spark," and the company has also been working on a next-generation large language model code-named "Watermelon."
