Meta Finally Has An AI Hit

Meta’s new AI assistant Muse topped the app download charts in its first week, sending the company’s stock up 11% in its biggest single-day gain since April 2025. The surge marked a sharp reversal for a stock that had been flat for most of the year. In a separate development, Shopify agreed to integrate Muse with its Shop Pay checkout service, signaling that at least one major e-commerce platform sees the AI agent as a partner rather than a threat. Elsewhere, Microsoft laid off 268 Xbox staffers and is moving the Halo franchise to Activision as part of a broader gaming restructuring. Xiaomi quietly released a new open-weight AI model that now tops third-party benchmarks, outperforming models from Google and xAI. And a16z announced it is investing $35 million in a two-year, unaccredited alternative college for students aged 16 to 22, backed by Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia, and OpenAI.

Muse Is Meta’s First Clear AI Hit

Meta’s Muse app was the number one free app on both the Apple App Store and Google Play as of Monday, six days after its September 8th launch. According to Sensor Tower, the app was downloaded more than 902,000 times in that window, surpassing the 773,000 downloads of its predecessor, the Meta AI app, in the same post-launch period. Muse is also available inside WhatsApp, so total usage is likely higher than the standalone download count suggests.