Meta Unveils Muse AI Glasses and Charm Device, Shares Fall 2.8%

Meta used its Meta Connect event to unveil the Muse Charm, a standalone pocket device built exclusively for voice interaction with the company's new Muse agent, alongside a major push into what Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg called Personal Superintelligence. The Muse Charm debut came late Wednesday, and Meta also showed off the Meta VR Glasses, a 100-gram spatial computing headset priced at $1,299 with 5K micro-OLED displays, tethered puck processing, and native eye and hand tracking, plus the third-generation Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 glasses starting at an entry-level $249 and camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses for open-ear listening and AI voice interaction. Meta's Muse has amassed more than 3.4 million downloads since its Sept. 8 launch, according to new Sensor Tower data obtained by Yahoo Finance, including 2.8 million in its first two weeks, versus 3.7 million for OpenAI's ChatGPT, 400,000 for SpaceXAI's Grok, and 300,000 for Anthropic's Claude over the same 14 days post-launch. Meta stock has surged 14% in the past five days, even as it trades on a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 22 times, below its long-term average of 23.1 times, with 2027 EPS estimates still well below levels seen 90 days ago. Citi analyst Ronald Josey said the firm emerges from Meta Connect incrementally positive on Meta shares, calling Muse the centerpiece of Meta's AI product strategy as voice, additional distribution points through Meta Glasses, and services across shopping, travel, and productivity verticals could unlock incremental monetization opportunities.

SoftBank is set to roll out the new Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 in Japan on September 25, giving Meta Platforms another distribution channel for its AI-powered smart glasses. The Japanese carrier has been steadily expanding its smart-glasses business, becoming the country's first mobile network operator to sell Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 glasses in June and enlarging its Meta glasses assortment again in August. Alongside the Gen 3 launch, SoftBank will also add Meta Glasses by LISA to its lineup. The wider retail and carrier availability matters to Meta because smart glasses are a prominent piece of its push to extend artificial intelligence beyond smartphones and PCs, and could help it gauge whether AI-powered wearables can become a substantial consumer hardware category. Meta shares closed up 4.5% at $777.59 on Thursday, while SoftBank Group's U.S.-listed shares slumped 7.6%.

Dolby Laboratories Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. said Wednesday they are expanding Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision across Meta's ecosystem. Meta's new AI glasses will be the first global consumer device that can capture audio in Dolby Atmos, letting users record spatial audio and share it on Instagram, which already supports Dolby Vision. The rollout builds on Meta's introduction of Dolby Vision on Instagram last year, and Meta also said its upcoming VR device will support Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos when it launches next year. The announcement came as Meta used Connect 2026 to unveil a $1,299 VR glasses device, expand its AI glasses lineup and bring its Muse personal AI agent to more products. The partnership expands Dolby's presence across Meta's social media, wearable and virtual reality platforms.