Meta Unveiled a New Frontier Model as it Expands Its AI Footprint. Its Stock is Climbing.

Meta introduced new frontier models that it says can compete with the top AI companies in different tasks as it seeks to expand its footprint in the rapidly-growing industry.

The company claimed that Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full are "built to deliver state-of-the-art performance on personal and professional agentic tasks — from navigating an insurance claim to making sense of a lease to building a working app."

The former is already available through the Meta Model API and Muse Code, while the latter can be accessed by Muse Code Subscribers. The company's stock climbed on the news, gaining almost 2.5% at 11:58 a.m. ET.

Meta said the models can interpret problems and work through them in areas like "law, finance, and health," as well as coding. It will also feature Active Memory, which the company described as "the ability to carry what matters to you across conversations and bring back the details that are relevant to the task at hand."

Meta has been dominating in the AI agent field. That has led JPMorgan to recently bet that Muse could become the most widely used consumer AI application since ChatGPT.

Company analyst Doug Anmuth raised the bank's price target on Meta to $920, saying the company "continues to move towards superintelligence with Muse off to a strong start, quickly iterating, improving, and expanding, with the potential to bring an extremely capable personal agent to billions of users."

"While it is still early, we believe that Muse has the potential to become the most widely used consumer AI application since ChatGPT," he added. That would represent a significant shift in the AI race.

While OpenAI's ChatGPT helped introduce generative AI to a mass audience, Meta is positioning Muse as something beyond a chatbot. The agent is designed not only to answer questions but to take actions on a user's behalf, including sending emails, booking travel, filling out forms and making purchases.

Meta also put Muse into a dedicated piece of hardware, unveiling in late September a keychain-sized device that lets users talk to the AI, show it their surroundings and access it without pulling out a smartphone or wearing smart glasses.

The Muse Charm was introduced during Meta Connect, where CEO Mark Zuckerberg showcased the small handheld device alongside a broader lineup of new glasses and virtual-reality hardware. The device has a screen measuring about 2 inches, a camera and its own 5G connection. The Charm is scheduled to ship in December but the company did not disclose a price.

"We've packed a lot of technology in this little guy," Zuckerberg said during the keynote, adding that the Charm provides another way to interact with Muse for people who are not wearing Meta's glasses. The company also said Muse will eventually be available through its AI glasses.