Meta’s Muse Tops App Store as Stock Jumps 11%

The latest:

Meta’s new AI agent, Muse, reached No. 1 in Apple’s App Store within two weeks of release, and the company’s shares climbed 11% on Monday — their biggest single-day gain since April 2025 and highest close since October. Also Monday, Meta and Shopify said they are teaming up to let Muse complete purchases on users’ behalf.

Details:

• The product: Agents within Muse can book doctor’s appointments, buy products, manage finances and send emails on users’ behalf, according to the Wall Street Journal. Over the weekend, X filled with posts praising the agent, an early sign that AI agents may find an audience beyond corporate software buyers.
• The access problem: For Muse to work it requires access to users’ emails, calendars, e-commerce accounts and bank accounts. The Journal reported this is one area where Meta’s strategy appears destined to face hurdles, since the stakes rise when an agent can spend money without a human approving each step.
• The enterprise context: Until now, AI agents have largely been enterprise technology, pitched as the new interface for business software and even as coworkers alongside human staff. Companies already use them for customer service, writing code and analyzing data.
• The scale forecast: Within two years, the average global Fortune 500 enterprise will run more than 150,000 AI agents, according to market research and IT consulting firm Gartner. FedEx is planning an AI agent workforce to work with its human staff, the company’s Chief Digital and Information Officer Vishal Talwar said earlier this year.
• The obstacles: Enterprises have struggled with cost, cybersecurity risk and deploying too many agents at once. Consumers face a sharper version: many companies maintain teams to govern agent errors and contain a rogue agent, while individual users have no such safeguard.
• The Washington push: OpenAI is asking the U.S. government to lead an international effort on global safety standards for frontier AI, the Journal reported. A proposal published Monday urged countries to agree on common measures for evaluating forthcoming self-improving systems and to build secure channels for sharing emerging threats.
• The timing: OpenAI’s call landed as world leaders gathered in New York for the United Nations General Assembly and as President Trump prepared to host Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington.
• The lawsuit: British Columbia sued OpenAI and Chief Executive Sam Altman on Monday over alleged safety violations tied to the Tumbler Ridge mass school shooting, the Journal reported. The suit claims the company designed an unsafe product and was negligent in failing to flag the suspect’s ChatGPT activity to police. The attack killed 8 people and injured more than 25.
• The warnings: OpenAI employees raised alarms about the suspect’s chatbot use months before the massacre, according to the Journal. The company’s response to the filing has not been disclosed.
• The labor effect: Startups are shrinking head count because of AI, the Journal reported. Founders are asking whether software can do a job before hiring for it, and some have laid off employees or cut ties with contractors and agencies.

Between the lines:

Both stories point at the same unresolved gap. Muse’s appeal rests on handing an agent money, calendars and inboxes at the moment OpenAI is asking governments to write safety rules that do not yet exist, and British Columbia is testing in court whether a company is liable for what its system failed to catch.

What’s next

Watch whether the Meta-Shopify checkout integration ships with spending limits, how OpenAI’s standards proposal is received during UN General Assembly week, and OpenAI’s formal response to the British Columbia filing.