Meta Platforms (META) just wrapped one of its biggest product weeks in years, and Wall Street’s reaction split in an interesting way.
One bank is betting on an AI agent that could rival ChatGPT itself. Another is watching a quieter story unfold in hardware.
Both views landed within hours of each other after Meta’s Connect conference on Sept. 23, and together they say a lot about where analysts think Meta’s next leg of growth is actually coming from.
JPMorgan says Muse could become the top AI application
JPMorgan raised its Meta price target to $920 from $820 following Connect, maintaining its Overweight rating.
Analyst Doug Anmuth said the personal AI agent Muse has “the potential to bring an extremely capable personal agent to billions of users” and argued the agent “has the potential to become the most widely used consumer AI application since ChatGPT,” TipRanks reported.
The excitement traces back to Muse’s early performance. The agent overtook ChatGPT as the top free iOS app in the United States and pulled in more downloads than Anthropic’s Claude and SpaceXAI’s Grok app within its first two weeks on the market, according to CNBC.
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Meta also gave Muse new reach at Connect. The agent can now tap into shopping connectors with Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora, and Wayfair, though Amazon is keeping it out of its own store. Within its first two weeks, Muse had connected with more than 2,000 applications.
Anmuth’s revenue model is straightforward. Muse connects to retail apps. Users complete purchases through it. Meta takes a cut. Zuckerberg confirmed the transaction fee plan at Connect.
Nothing about that model is new to platforms. Amazon built a business on it. The question is whether Muse gets used enough for the cut to matter, TipRanks reported.
Morgan Stanley holds steady and flags the hardware story
Morgan Stanley kept its Overweight rating and held its price target at $775 after Connect. It did not move the number. What it did do was flag the hardware story, which is not something Morgan Stanley has historically been willing to do on Meta.
Analysts led by Brian Nowak wrote that Meta’s new AI glasses “does seem to be a notable improvement in size and capabilities and will have to be watched as a potential further upside node for ’27.”
Part of what changed their view was engineering. Meta moved the battery and processor into a separate puck, reducing the glasses themselves to roughly the weight of a deck of playing cards.
That is a different product from anything Meta has shipped before. The previous Ray-Ban Meta glasses were limited by the weight of their onboard hardware. Offloading the compute changes the design space entirely and could make them more wearable for longer periods, which is the real barrier to mainstream adoption.
Morgan Stanley was careful to frame the hardware upside as incremental. The analysts wrote that shares are “not pricing in any success here,” meaning any real traction with the new glasses would represent upside on top of the current stock price rather than something investors have already paid for, Benzinga reported.
Meta’s hardware position gives that bet some foundation. The company accounted for 68.7% of global smart glasses shipments in the second quarter, though Samsung and other Android XR partners are preparing rival products later this fall.
How the broader analyst reaction stacked up
Morgan Stanley was not alone in holding its target. But others moved further. Citizens raised its Meta target to $885 from $770 while maintaining an Outperform rating, Investing.com reported.
Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski had already moved to $796 from $640 following the initial Muse launch earlier in September. Meta’s stock climbed as much as 11% in a single session after that upgrade, Motley Fool reported.
Morgan Stanley has been wrong to dismiss Meta hardware before and right to be cautious about it too. The Quest never became what Zuckerberg said it would. The Ray-Ban glasses did better than almost anyone expected.
“Upside node for 27” is not a ringing endorsement. It is a flag. From a firm that rarely flies one on this topic, that is enough to pay attention to.
What it means for Meta investors
Meta stock rose roughly 3% to around $768 the day after Connect, trading near its highest level in almost a year and closing in on a record high. The stock had already gained nearly 25% since the initial Muse launch earlier in September, according to Benzinga.
That rally means a lot of the optimism around both Muse and the hardware lineup was already priced in before Connect even started. JPMorgan’s $920 target implies roughly 24% upside from Wednesday’s close. Morgan Stanley’s unchanged $775 implies the stock has already run to where the firm thinks it belongs for now.
The split between the two banks offers investors two different reads on the same week. JPMorgan is betting Muse becomes Meta’s next major revenue engine. Morgan Stanley is betting that hardware, an area investors have written off for years, may end up being the bigger surprise that nobody has priced in yet.
JPMorgan raised its target. Morgan Stanley did not. One is betting the app changes everything. The other is watching to see if the hardware surprises.
Meta stock is up 25% in a month. Something has to actually work for that to hold.
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