Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) surged 11% after its Muse AI agent crossed 2.5 million downloads and briefly topped Apple’s U.S. App Store charts as a free iPhone app.
Deepwater Asset Management Managing Partner Gene Munster drew a direct line between Meta’s rally and what he expects to follow for Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA), SpaceX (SPCX), and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL).
“We knew Muse was coming for six months,” Munster said on X. “The stock is ripping because the broader market has now used the product and finally gets how good it is.”
Munster expects the same “rip higher” dynamic to play out through Apple’s iPhone Duo and personalized Siri, Tesla’s Full Self-Driving, Cybercab and Optimus, and SpaceX’s orbital data centers.
Muse launched in the U.S. earlier this month as both a standalone app and through WhatsApp, capable of sending emails, booking travel, shopping, completing forms, and continuing tasks after the app closes.
Daily active users for Muse reached 448,000 on September 18, while downloads totaled approximately 730,000 during its first five days on the market.
Wells Fargo raised its Meta price target to $796 from $640 following the Muse traction, implying roughly 7% upside, and said the company “now has a story to tell” around artificial intelligence.
On the Apple front, Munster identifies two potential catalysts: the $1,999 foldable iPhone Duo, which ships October 23 with a 7.6-inch display, and a long-awaited personalized version of Siri.
Counterpoint estimates Apple could sell around six million iPhone Duo units by year-end, while IDC expects the device to capture 40% of the foldable market by the end of 2027.
Apple’s personalized Siri, arriving roughly two years after its original announcement and partly relying on a customized Gemini model, must prove genuinely useful to consumers rather than register as another delayed AI feature.
Munster placed Tesla’s catalysts in deliberate sequence, beginning with FSD v15, which the company has called a “step-change,” with 40% of its seven-track software architecture already deployed in the Austin robotaxi fleet.
Tesla says its HW4 computer can support unsupervised driving and is targeting robotaxi costs of $0.30 per mile, with limited paid Cybercab rides having begun in Austin on September 4.
Oppenheimer called Tesla’s Cybercab factory “impressive” but warned that the Optimus production ramp would “likely” face further delays, even as Tesla confirmed the Optimus Gen 3 design is finalized.
Tesla says external Optimus sales could begin in the second half of 2027, positioning the humanoid robot as the final and potentially largest catalyst in the company’s near-term product pipeline.
For SpaceX, the defining moment hinges on orbital computing, with Elon Musk confirming that SpaceX and Nvidia designed a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 system targeting a first launch in the fourth quarter of 2027.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has confirmed that Anthropic and Google have rented orbital capacity, while JPMorgan has outlined a potential path to 75 gigawatts of orbital computing power by 2031.
In an FCC filing, SpaceX sought authorization for as many as one million Starmind satellites weighing up to 4,000 kilograms each, signaling the extraordinary scale the company envisions for its space-based AI infrastructure.
On Stocktwits, retail sentiment was “bullish” for META and SPCX amid high message volume, while sentiment for TSLA and AAPL was “bearish” amid low message volume as of the latest data.
Year-to-date, AAPL and META have gained approximately 25% and 13% respectively, while SPCX has fallen nearly 6% and TSLA has tumbled around 17%, leaving meaningful room for a catalyst-driven recovery.
