Meta Expands Muse AI Agent at Connect 2026 With New Hardware and Partner Integrations, Shaking Finance Stocks

META used its Connect 2026 event in Menlo Park on Wednesday, September 23 to widen the reach of Muse, the personal AI agent it launched earlier in September . Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang said Muse now supports PayPal and announced integrations with retailers including Walmart, Best Buy, Sephora and Wayfair, a travel connection to Expedia, and grocery shopping through Instacart . Those add to existing connectors such as Gmail and Spotify, and to a Shopify checkout deal announced earlier in the week, so the agent can complete tasks and purchases rather than just answer questions . Meta has pitched Muse as "the world's first personal AI agent" .

The company also introduced hardware built around the agent. The Muse Charm is a keychain-sized, Tamagotchi-like device that lets users talk to Muse without unlocking a phone . Camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses offer audio-only access to the agent while sidestepping the privacy concerns of camera glasses . Meta VR Glasses, priced at $1,299 with IMAX content, are slated for spring 2027 . EssilorLuxottica said it will expand the AI-glasses lineup to more than 100 styles and enter 10 new markets .

Meta shares closed about 1% higher on the day of the event, slipped about 1% in premarket trading the next morning, and have gained more than 20% since Muse's release . Earlier in the week, Muse's rise also hit stocks that depend on customer inertia: Charles Schwab fell 6.1% on September 22, while JPMorgan and Wells Fargo dropped more than 3% each, on concerns that an agent able to move money and compare offers could erode sticky customer relationships . Zuckerberg said Muse will take a small fee from transactions it facilitates, positioning Meta as a middleman in agent-driven commerce .

What to watch: Muse transaction volumes and fee revenue, adoption of the Charm and camera-free glasses, and how platforms such as Amazon, which has blocked Muse from its store, and financial firms respond to agent-driven customers .