Firms say Meta's Muse shopping agent has had little impact
Executives at about 50 firms told Wired that orders from Meta's Muse agent are tiny so far, even as Meta says shopping is its top use.
The facts
- According to Wired, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people in the US and Canada have activated Muse, and over 25 percent used it for shopping.
- DoorDash put orders from Muse and other agents in the "hundreds", Hilton called bookings "insignificant", and eBay called volumes "very, very small".
- Chipotle said Muse's debut lifted agentic orders by a single-digit percentage, and it is now tidying its website code so agents can complete purchases.
- Zuckerberg said Meta plans to charge businesses a fee on Muse transactions; Amazon blocked Muse last month but now says it expects to work with outside agents.
Case notes · Danny's take
Why it matters
A tool can have millions of users and still barely move the numbers for the shops it sends them to. Meta's claims and the retailers' data are describing different things, and that gap is the story. The real fight is over who owns the checkout: if agents decide what gets bought, the fee Meta plans to charge becomes a toll on every sale. Early days, but companies are already rewriting their websites for software shoppers.
For traders
Don't trade the earnings-call talk. Watch whether retailers who report after Muse's launch start giving actual order figures, and whether Meta shares transaction numbers rather than user counts.
For builders
Agents fail on small things like loyalty discounts and after-hours ordering, as Chipotle found. Clean, predictable checkout flows and accurate product data are the cheap fix, and that is where tools and services for agent-ready sites could find work. Security is the other gap: banks are warning customers against handing logins to AI assistants.
Not financial advice. Do your own investigation.
This story was summarised with AI from Wired's reporting and checked against our editorial policy. Danny's take reflects his views. Disclaimer.
Danny Walter
Founder of Moon Republic, Volt Terminal and Moon Republic Academy. Author of The Market Is a Crime Scene and After the Applause.