Mark Zuckerberg stood on stage in Menlo Park last month holding a gadget small enough to hang off your keys, and one of the “faces” it can wear is a slice of toast in sunglasses.

It’s called Muse Charm. It’s kitsch. It’s cute. For those old enough to remember, it’s got complete “Tamagotchi vibes,” albeit far more in tune with today’s AI world.

I think it’s very intentionally aimed at kids. And if you’ve got kids, you know how this goes. One kid brings it to school, and by Friday, the whole class wants one.

I don’t want my kids anywhere near social media, but if this proves to be disconnected from that, well I’ll at least explore it and test it out. But that’s not till December when the things go on sale.

But I think these Tamagotchis-for-the-modern-world things tell us more about Meta (Nasdaq: META) than this week’s earnings did. Though it must be said, their earnings (again) were outstanding, and I think makes Meta one of the best stocks you could own.

Revenue for the September quarter was a record $64.6 billion, up 26% on a year ago.

Their forecasts are now $73 billion to $76 billion this quarter.

Earnings came in at $3.83 a share, which includes a $9.89 billion charge to settle teen mental health claims with 52 attorneys general. Without it, Meta earned $7.40.

There’s a lot more to be said about that, but not today…

So, looking at these earnings, I’m thinking to myself, this company is rock solid. And they’re now clearly going all in on AI.

Can they “win” the AI race?

Well, yes, and no.

The way I see it, Nvidia sells the chips and wins that part of AI. And Amazon runs the agentic web through AWS, winning that part of AI. Microsoft owns AI at work, the way it owned it with Office and Teams, so it wins that part of AI.

And as I said on October 14, Apple I think will come to dominate the home, and they clearly will continue to dominate the smartphone market, so they’ll win there.

But none of this is really what I’d call “consumer AI”. The AI-specific devices and tools that will be used at scale, as in billions of people, for fun and enjoyment.

And that’s where I think Meta wins its part of the AI race.

Muse looks like a big Zuckerberg bet that’s going to pay off. Sure, they completely botched the Metaverse, and they failed at a Libra (Diem) stablecoin, I’d say they’ve failed (so far) at VR too.

But Muse is different. It’s Meta’s AI agent, which means it does jobs for you, like booking dinner or buying the kids’ school shoes.

On Wednesday’s call, Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people in the U.S. and Canada set it up in six weeks.

About a quarter of them use it every day, and over a quarter shop with it, spending more than $200 a go.

Then Walmart said they’d let muse access their platforms. Best Buy and Shopify have all plugged in, albeit Amazon has blocked it. But I don’t think that will last long.

Then there are the glasses, where EssilorLuxottica (owner of Oakley and Ray-Bans) sold over seven million Meta pairs in 2025. Meta’s new ones start at $349.

The competition there, Snap’s Specs cost $2,195 and run for about four hours on a charge. And also, they look like trash.

Integrate Muse into Meta glasses and suddenly Muse is everywhere all at once.

As Zuckerberg said, “We expect to grow Muse to serve billions of people.”

Meta is a big company, around $1.7 trillion.

And while they could easily come to dominate this consumer segment of AI, we still don’t really know what OpenAI is cooking. But it’s very clear they’re heading down a similar trajectory.

Maybe that hits Meta, but also maybe Meta is pushing this now, knowing what competition is coming so they want to get a big lead in the market.

And that’s what they’re doing.

But it still looks like the market is undervaluing Meta to me. Meta closed Wednesday at $697.52, up 5.7% this year, while Apple is up 26.5%.

Meta trades on 26 times earnings and Apple on 39x.

Meta is worth $1.78 trillion, and Apple is worth $5.02 trillion. Apple might hit $10 trillion first, but I don’t think Meta will be far behind.

Apple to $10 trillion is about 100% from here. Meta to $10 trillion is 5.6x.

I like them both, but it’s clear where the bigger upside lies.

It will be interesting to see the earnings for 2027 once sales of Muse Charm kick into gear and if they can maintain the astronomical growth.

But don’t write off Meta, in fact dare I say, of all the big tech plays to center a portfolio around, Meta might be the best of them all.

More soon,

Lewis Maguire