Meta Posts $64.6 Billion in Q3 Revenue as Muse AI Agent Surpasses 10 Million Users

Meta Platforms reported third-quarter revenue of $64.6 billion on Wednesday, a 26% increase year over year that cleared analyst consensus estimates of $63.37 billion compiled by LSEG by more than $1 billion, as the company's newly launched Muse AI personal agent drew early traction from consumers.

The company's diluted earnings per share came in at $3.83, a figure complicated by a $9.89 billion legal settlement charge — equivalent to $3.57 per share — to resolve teen addiction litigation brought by state attorneys general. Excluding that charge, diluted EPS would have been $7.40. Analyst estimates ranged from $2.61 to $7.57 per share, reflecting wide disagreement over whether to include the settlement in projections.

Meta shares rose approximately 2.5% in after-hours trading following the report.

For the fourth quarter, Meta guided revenue between $73 billion and $76 billion, or $74.5 billion at the midpoint of the range, above the analyst consensus of $73.73 billion according to LSEG.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the earnings call that more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada have set up Muse personal agents in the roughly six weeks since the product launched on September 8. Of those users, approximately 25% are active on any given day — a retention rate Zuckerberg said is more than twice the level seen at Threads or, in the company's estimation, at comparable AI applications.

Shopping has emerged as the dominant use case for Muse. Zuckerberg said more than a quarter of Muse users have engaged in agent-led shopping, with an average purchase size exceeding $200. He cited external validation of that activity, noting that "Plaid told us that they hadn't seen activity like they're seeing with their connector on any other service before, and in the first week we had to work with Stripe to raise credit limits since the volumes were above what any of us expected."

Meta's monetization roadmap for Muse is structured across three tiers: a free tier supported by e-commerce transaction fees, paid tiers offering access to newer models and higher token budgets, and a business tier targeting enterprise productivity. Zuckerberg acknowledged that Muse is currently compute-intensive but projected a greater than tenfold improvement in cost efficiency over the next year.

To maximize the return on its model infrastructure, Meta announced the Meta Enterprise Platform, to be led by CJ Desai, formerly CEO of MongoDB. The platform is intended to serve high-margin inference demand across its API, Muse Code, and other enterprise services. Meta also released Muse Wonder, described as a new frontier AI model, the previous Monday before the earnings report.

"If compute efficiency continues improving quickly for another few years, which we think is highly likely, then Muse will be highly profitable over multiple years," Zuckerberg said.

The company revealed plans to create a new class of non-voting Class C common stock, effective January 2027, to be distributed to existing shareholders via a dividend — a structure that functions as a two-for-one stock split. Meta said the move is intended to finance growth and preserve the company's founder-led governance model. Separately, Zuckerberg committed to remaining in California, or wherever the company maintains its headquarters, for eight years under a Founder Alignment Agreement, in part to address potential exposure under California's Proposition 40, a proposed wealth tax that a company SEC filing warned could cost him a "significant, multi-billion-dollar tax payment."

Meta's workforce shrank 12% quarter-on-quarter to 66,000 employees, finance chief Susan Li told analysts, following layoffs conducted over the summer that affected roughly 8,000 workers, or about 10% of the workforce at that time.

The company's Reality Labs division posted $443 million in revenue against $4.13 billion in losses for the quarter, compared to analyst expectations from StreetAccount of $513 million in revenue and a $4.54 billion loss.

With Muse retention metrics trending upward and a multi-tier monetization structure now articulated, the degree to which Meta can scale the agent network — and convert its sizable advertising cash flow into AI infrastructure returns — will be closely watched in the quarters ahead.

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