Episode summary
Deepwater's Gene Munster: Meta's Muse bot is the company's future
CNBC Fast Money
· · 6 min · Hosts: Seema Mody · Guests: Gene Munster
Summary
Gene Munster argued that Meta’s Q3 call reinforced Muse as the company’s core future, even though the product is still early and the user base is tiny relative to Meta’s overall scale. He said the big question is monetization, especially around commerce, but that Mark Zuckerberg’s message was clear: retailers will have to adapt to bots, not the other way around.
Munster framed Muse as more than a feature inside Instagram, Facebook, or WhatsApp. He said it is becoming a new platform centered on personalized agents, and that the industry is moving toward bot-to-bot commerce rather than human-to-human marketing. He compared the shift to music streaming, where consumers cared about access to music, not the record labels behind it.
He also highlighted the financial tradeoff. Meta did not give a calendar 2027 capex guide, but Munster said the company is still in a major buildout and may need to raise capital, potentially $25 billion to $50 billion. He suggested the market would probably accept that if investors believe the AI strategy is still in its early phase and can scale to billions of users.
Key takeaways
- Munster said Muse is "the future of the company" and the key driver is commerce-based monetization.
- He estimated Meta may have about 10 million daily Muse users, a tiny figure versus the company’s 3.65 billion-person ecosystem.
- Munster argued the future of marketing is "bot to bot," not direct to humans, and expects billions of people to use personalized bots within three years.
- He said Meta may need to raise $25 billion to $50 billion because capex and free cash flow pressure are still building.
- Munster compared AI commerce to streaming music: users will care about the shopping outcome, not which platform or retailer powers it.
Notable quotes
“MAKE NO MISTAKE, MUSE IS THE FUTURE OF THE COMPANY. THIS IS WHETHER IT'S GOING TO BE COMMERCE BASED”
“THE FUTURE OF MARKETING IS NOT TO HUMANS. IT'S BOT TO BOT”
“I THINK STRUCTURALLY THEY'RE GOING TO HAVE TO OPEN UP. I MEAN, THAT'S THE REALITY IS THIS THE FUTURE OF MARKETING IS NOT TO HUMANS”
How the episode opens
That's going to decide it and nobody knows right now. I threw out a number last night. I don't think 420 is ridiculous given his history. But obviously the market is struggling with where the value Tesla based on what we think is going to happen.
All right. Let's get more on all these earnings and bring in Gene Munster Deepwater Asset Management where he is a managing partner. Gene. Good to have you with us. — Hello. — We've got a lot to get through but let's kick it off with META. Did you hear enough about muse to satisfy questions about path to monetization?
Well, I think dan was taking some issue about retailers jumping in here. And zuck said that basically the question came up like, how are you going to get retailers on board with these bots in the commerce? His response was, they're going to have to get on board.
He said that in a nice way. Cfo stepped in and kind of toned it down a little bit and said, it's going to take a little bit of time. But I think that that's a big key takeaway here, is just that we're still very early in what's going on with the bots, and they're going to have to do a lot to get retailers comfortable.
But make no mistake, muse is the future of the company. This is whether it's going to be commerce based. That's the big driver right now.
That's the number one use case. They highlighted that it's commerce. But even beyond that, what I think is investors need to take into consideration here is that muse is effectively the new platform.
And so yes, they'll still have instagram. They'll still have facebook, whatsapp. But from an engagement perspective, they're seeing that this, the, the personalized agent side will basically start to take more and more of our time.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- meta earnings
- muse bots monetization
- path to monetization
- retail commerce integration
- ai agents/platform shift
Companies and tickers mentioned
- META
- TSLA
- Meta
- Tesla
- Deepwater Asset Management
Watch the episode
Watch “Deepwater's Gene Munster: Meta's Muse bot is the company's future” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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