Meta: 3 Key Takeaways for Long-Term Investors

On its third quarter of 2026 earnings call, held on Oct. 21, 2026, Meta (NASDAQ:META) announced the launch of its Muse personal agent, an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant designed for personal superintelligence. Rapid adoption of new AI tools and ad system upgrades is expanding user engagement and establishing new monetization paths. Three things management said stand out.

1. Muse Reaches 10 Million Users as Commerce Drives Adoption

Meta introduced its Muse personal agent, an AI assistant that executes tasks for users, and recorded rapid adoption driven by unexpected shopping volume. Building a large consumer network enables the company to generate transaction fees from business partners over time.

In just a month and a half, more than 10 million people in the US and Canada have set up Muse personal agents, Growth continues to be strong, and we have been number 1 in the App Store almost every day.
-- Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer

2. Reality Labs Narrowing Losses to $15 Billion as Focus Shifts

Management is pacing investments in virtual reality (VR) hardware to prioritize software and personal agent models. Reducing operating losses in this segment's profit and loss (P&L) statement frees up capital to fund high-return AI infrastructure.

So with these factors combined, we expect that the P&L of Reality Labs to improve from here with operating loss coming down to approximately $15 billion next year and trending toward profitability from there.
-- Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer

3. First-Party AI Models Cut Content Processing Costs by Over 80%

Transitioning content processing to internal Muse models improves recommendation accuracy across social feeds while drastically lowering compute expenses. Lower unit costs strengthen profit margins as engagement scales across apps.

In offline evaluations, these models are outperforming our prior production models and are reducing per unit content processing costs by more than 80% across Instagram threads, Facebook, and ads.
-- Susan J. Li, Chief Financial Officer

Looking Ahead

Engagement and ad efficiency are accelerating across Meta's social platforms. Infrastructure scale and global distribution give the business room to fund AI tools while tracking compute efficiency.

The benefits our AI investments are delivering to the core business combined with emerging opportunities from model advances and product launches, position us to sustain strong overall revenue growth throughout 2027.
-- Susan J. Li, Chief Financial Officer

Deploying personal agents to billions of users positions the company for long-term network monetization.

If compute efficiency continues improving quickly for another few years, which we think is highly likely, then Muse will be highly profitable over the years.
-- Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, Chief Executive Officer

The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.