Smart agents’ shopping breaks the $200 barrier and changes Meta’s revenue model
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Meta disclosed in its third-quarter financial results that users of its smart app “Muze” have passed the 10-million-user mark, confirming earlier estimates by market-research firm Sensor Tower. However, the metric that caught chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s attention was not the sheer number of subscribers but actual spending behavior; the average value of purchase baskets executed through the smart agent exceeded $200 for active shoppers, a figure that surpassed expectations among technology-sector observers.
Zuckerberg said that roughly 25 percent of those who installed the app use it daily, which has raised user-retention rates. These automated commercial transactions rely on the fintech company Blade’s connector to link the agent with customers’ bank accounts, and Blade officials told Meta’s management that they have not observed similar activity through their connector in any other digital service. The app’s functions do not stop at purchasing; they also extend to personal productivity tasks by linking the agent to email and calendar schedules.
Zuckerberg attributed this uptake to users’ confidence in the security architecture, which relies on an isolated virtual runtime environment designed to protect data and privacy under the name “Muze Secure Environment”. The company is preparing to launch an additional layer called the “Muze Confidential Virtual Environment”, aimed at preventing Meta itself from accessing users’ content and transaction details. Zuckerberg affirmed that the app’s reaching product-market fit steers the company toward expansion, revenue multiplication, and a reduction in operational computing costs.
The company expects its smart agent to generate revenue per user that exceeds what the combined Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger platforms currently produce, which is approaching several hundred dollars annually.Meta plans to make the app available free of charge to the general public, while taking a percentage of commercial transactions executed on the platform and charging subscription fees to professional users who wish to access advanced models or consume larger processing quotas.
On the infrastructure front, Meta is building capacity aimed at serving more than one billion people over the next few years. Although running the agent currently consumes intensive computing resources, the company expects to improve cost efficiency by more than tenfold within the next year, paving the way for profitability once expansion is complete. This trajectory aligns with the smart-glasses strategy in the Reality Labs division, which is moving to reduce its annual losses from $19.1 billion in 2025 to $15 billion during the current year.
Meta also plans to develop what Zuckerberg described as the “Muze Network”, an architecture that shifts the experience from individual interaction to a system where your smart agent communicates with the agents of your friends and family members. In this model, the shopper will not need to browse an online store to select goods; instead, their personal agent will conduct direct dialogue and negotiation with the retailer’s agent to complete the purchase.
The editorial board sees this shift from traditional browsing interfaces to automated agent negotiation imposing a new reality on the retail and e-commerce sector in the Gulf, Egypt and the Levant.When the purchase decision moves from the consumer’s eye scanning visual ads to an agent algorithm that searches data and prices, traditional digital-marketing budgets on social networks lose their usual effectiveness. Regional retailers in Riyadh, Dubai and Cairo will need to provide structured APIs that enable agents to query and buy instantly, while recalculating profit margins to accommodate the platform’s transaction fee instead of the cost-per-click model.
It becomes clear that technical competition goes beyond generating textual answers to become a financial intermediary that executes payments and commercial exchange. Watch how platforms protect financial privacy and offer viable margins to companies, because the shift to agent-based commerce not only changes purchasing tools but also reshapes the relationship among distribution platforms, merchants and end consumers.