Muse goes viral, analysts see a double boon: Meta (META.US) valuation may be in for a re-rating, inference compute demand is expected to surge.

Analysts say that if the early momentum behind Muse, Meta Platforms' (META.US) artificial intelligence agent, can be sustained, it could further drive up demand for inference-related compute. Muse can perform multi-step tasks on behalf of users. Muse may catalyze a re-rating of Meta's valuation Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney said in a report: "The market has been overly focused on the enterprise AI market, and we believe this focus is somewhat excessive. We understand it. Enterprises pay for productivity, while consumers do not. Or at least that is what the market believes." However, the emergence of Muse has changed this situation, because the product is marketed directly to consumers and has received a positive market response. It ranked first among free app downloads on both Apple Inc.'s (AAPL.US) App Store and Alphabet Inc. Class C's (GOOG.US, GOOGL.US) Play. Within five days of its release, it recorded nearly 750,000 installs on iOS in the United States. Mahaney added: "It is still too early to draw conclusions, but Muse is indeed a catalyst in the product cycle that can unlock Meta's stock price potential and drive a re-rating of the stock to 25 times (based on our 2027 estimate of $810), or even 30 times ($975), very similar to the impact of last year's successful launch of Gemini 3 on Alphabet Inc. Class C's stock price." Inference compute demand may surge; NVIDIA Corporation, AMD, and Arm in focus This is not only positive for Meta, but also for hardware providers that support the operation of Agentic AI. Seeking Alpha analyst Julia Ostian said: "The success of Meta Muse shows a continued shift toward agentic workloads, creating a huge inference demand catalyst for companies such as NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US) and AMD (AMD.US), as well as networking providers such as Broadcom Inc. (AVGO.US) and memory manufacturers such as Micron (MU.US). Of course, in my view, it is still too early to judge the actual use cases of these agents over the long term." Meanwhile, Tech Stock Pros believes this could significantly benefit makers of Arm-architecture CPUs. Tech Stock Pros said: "Muse is the market's first real exposure to consumer-facing agentic AI. Although many aspects remain to be verified, its successful adoption will have a profound impact on the CPU space. Currently, the CPU-to-GPU ratio is about 1:4 to 1:8. As agentic AI succeeds, this ratio could move closer to 1:1 to 1:2. That is also why we have seen a positive market response to CPU manufacturers after Muse's record downloads." "We believe that among all processors, Arm-architecture CPUs are the most likely to benefit, with energy-efficiency advantages more significant than those of the x86 architecture. It is also worth noting that if consumers continue to use agentic AI because of Muse, we believe this could create an entirely new, consumer-centric competitive landscape, including Apple Inc. and its new Siri." Meta Connect 2026 is approaching, with more AI products expected to be unveiled Of course, Muse's success is also a good sign for Meta itself. Evercore reiterated its "Outperform" rating and $860 price target on Meta shares after Muse's release. Mizuho also maintained its "Outperform" rating and $750 price target on Meta. Mizuho analyst Lloyd Walmsley said in a Tuesday report: "We believe Meta's bull case is increasingly emerging, with strong adoption momentum, Muse firmly holding the top spot on app store download charts, and the opening of its connector platform, with more AI products/partnerships to be launched at Meta Connect 2026. We believe the stock still has room to rise." Meta Connect 2026 will be held from September 23 to 24 at its Menlo Park campus in California, focusing on areas such as VR hardware, smart wearables, the metaverse ecosystem, and artificial intelligence, when the latest technological achievements and future strategic plans will be announced.