Meta's $14 billion AI bet looks like it's finally paying off

The eye-popping $14.3 billion deal Meta ( META ) founder Mark Zuckerberg made to buy up all the employees of hot AI startup Scale AI in 2025 — including well-connected wunderkid Alexandr Wang, who got about $5 billion as part of the deal — appears to be paying off.

"People thought Mark Zuckerberg was crazy when Meta paid Alexandr Wang $5 billion to be Meta's Chief AI Officer. At the time, the price looked outrageous," tech investor Adam Khoo said in an X post. "Fast-forward to today: Meta's new AI products developed under Wang's leadership have added roughly $200 billion in market value. Suddenly, paying billions to secure world-class talent doesn't look quite so crazy. That's how great entrepreneurs think. The question isn't: How much does this person cost? The question is: How much value can this person create? If someone can help you create $10 billion in value, paying them $1 billion can be an absolute bargain."

In effect, the deal changed the view of Meta being late to the AI game to outright leading it.

Meta's Steve Jobs-like surprise at Meta Connect late Wednesday came in the form of the Muse Charm. It's a standalone pocket device built exclusively for voice interaction with the company's new Muse agent, currently one of the most-downloaded apps (and a major stock market driver this week, as discussed in the above video).

Zuckerberg also showcased a major shift toward "Personal Superintelligence" by unveiling a hardware-meets-AI moment in the Meta VR Glasses.

Weighing just 100 grams — roughly one-fifth the weight of Meta's Quest 3 — the $1,299 spatial computing glasses feature 5K micro-OLED displays, tethered puck processing, and native eye and hand tracking.

On the smart eyewear front , Meta debuted the third-generation Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 glasses, starting at an entry-level $249. Joining them are the camera-free Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, designed purely for open-ear listening and AI voice interaction.

Wang, decked out in a pair of camo Crocs, played a prominent role on stage at the event with a presentation of his own.

Meta investors had already been having a week to remember as the new Muse AI agent surged to the top spot on Apple's App Store.

Muse reached 2.8 million downloads in its first 12 days across both the US and Canada App Stores, according to the latest Sensor Tower data.

What's more, Muse surpassed OpenAI's ( OPAI.PVT ) ChatGPT in early adoption, with 1.8 million downloads in Muse's first 12 days compared to 1.3 million for ChatGPT. Muse also set a new US daily download record of 264,000 on Sept. 19, its third straight day above 200,000.