Executives reveal new monetization strategy for Meta AI: Muse is ad-free but charges for enterprise services, and takes a commission on shopping through AI agents

Meta is attempting to find a monetization path for its AI business that differs from traditional advertising.

Meta's Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang said in an interview with Nikkei that Meta’s personal AI assistant, Muse, will remain ad-free and accessible to ordinary users for free, but advanced features and enterprise services will be charged. The company also plans to collect commissions from shopping transactions facilitated by the assistant. Wang stated that Muse can not only answer questions, but also execute tasks on behalf of users, saving them time and money, making it more useful than previous AI products.

On the day Nikkei News published the report, Friday, October 23, Muse was launched in the Japanese market for the first time. After going live in North America on September 8, Muse received an enthusiastic response, with related app downloads reaching 10 million in just six weeks, growing faster than some competitors, including ChatGPT.

From Personal Subscriptions to Enterprise Services: Exploring Income Beyond Advertising

Alexandr Wang stated that Muse is open to ordinary users for free, and Meta hopes to eventually bring it to billions of users. However, for heavy users and those wishing to access the most advanced models, the company has already launched a subscription plan. Meta also plans to offer paid services to enterprises, but Wang did not disclose specific pricing or a launch timeline.

Unlike Meta’s social platforms that rely on advertising for monetization, Wang made it clear: “There are no advertisements inside Muse, and we have no plans to place ads.”

This means that, at least according to the current plan, Meta will not directly embed ads into the Muse interface.

For Meta, where advertising accounts for over 95% of its revenue, the monetization path for Muse holds special significance. As the product expands to more markets and the company continues to invest large sums in building AI infrastructure, whether Meta can translate user growth into sustainable revenue is becoming a focus of market attention.

Commission on AI-enabled Shopping: Exploring Transaction Fee Income

In addition to subscriptions and enterprise services, Meta also plans to collect commissions from shopping transactions completed by users through the assistant, further extending Muse from handling information and tasks to consumer scenarios.

This model could allow Meta to gain transaction income beyond advertising, but how it will be implemented remains to be seen.

Meta has not disclosed the commission rates, range of applicable merchants, or official launch timing. The ultimate scale of revenue will depend on Muse’s task execution capabilities, merchant integration, and whether users are willing to entrust shopping decisions to the assistant.

Proprietary Infrastructure and Security Capabilities Support Muse’s Expansion

Alexandr Wang believes that Meta’s proprietary technical infrastructure, security system, and data centers are major advantages for Muse that are hard for competitors to replicate. For a personal AI assistant that needs to execute tasks, process user information, and connect to various services, apart from model capabilities, the scale, reliability, and security of the infrastructure are also critical.

Meta is investing enormous resources into this infrastructure.

On Wednesday, after the US stock market closed and upon issuing its financial report, Meta announced that its latest 2026 capital expenditure guidance range is $135 billion to $145 billion, raising the lower end of the range by $5 billion.

On Thursday, Meta also disclosed in regulatory filings that as of the end of September, the company had not commenced lease obligations and irrevocable contract commitments amounting to approximately $810 billion. If including up to about $14.7 billion in contingent cloud computing capacity procurement obligations, the future total committed investment rises to nearly $825 billion.

These investments serve both Meta’s existing business and will support the development of next-generation AI models and products. Whether this infrastructure can translate into stronger product capabilities, and in turn drive subscriptions, enterprise services, and transaction commission income, will be key to whether Muse can achieve successful commercialization.