Meta Shares Jump 12% as Options Traders Pour $3.9 Billion Into Muse AI Bets

Meta Platforms shares surged 12% Monday, September 21, 2026, pushing the stock within 7% of its August 2025 all-time high and extending a 21% rally since the company unveiled its new Muse AI assistant, according to CNBC.

Options traders drove the move. Trading volume in Meta options hit about 4.5 times the 30-day average Monday, with roughly $3.9 billion in total premium exchanged, according to data from Cboe LiveVol and SpotGamma cited by CNBC. More than twice as many calls were bought as puts, and seven of the ten largest trades of the day were bullish or neutral.

"The inflows in options are huge," said Brent Kochuba, founder of SpotGamma. "It seems like AI hype around their Muse."

What's actually driving this

Muse, Meta's personal AI agent, launched September 8 and is designed to take actions on a user's behalf, sending email, booking travel, filling out forms and making purchases once linked to a user's accounts, according to Meta's own product description as reported by Superpower Daily. It's built on a model called Muse Spark.

In its first roughly five days, Muse pulled in about 730,000 downloads and topped app store charts, according to Sensor Tower data cited by CNBC. That's a fast opening burst of consumer attention. Whether it turns into durable daily use, and eventually revenue, is a separate question the download numbers alone don't answer.

Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski raised his price target on Meta from $640 to $796, arguing the Muse launch gives Meta a more concrete AI story that investors can point to in an actual product rather than just data center spending, according to Superpower Daily. Meta also announced plans for a new transatlantic subsea data cable called Petal, according to CNBC.

The most heavily traded contracts Monday were zero-day-to-expiry calls with strikes from 720 to 745 that are now in the money, plus heavy volume in 775 and 800-strike calls expiring in mid-October, per CNBC. More than $1.3 billion in call premium was likely initiated by buyers, while about $1.1 billion was tied to selling. This pattern reflects bullish positioning balanced by upside hedging.

Not every big trader was betting the rally continues. The single largest dollar trade of the session was a roughly $20 million net short position built through spread trades, including the sale of a one-by-two 710/765-strike call spread expiring October 16 that pays off if Meta falls below $740, according to CNBC.

The numbers Wall Street's cheering past

Meta's market cap sits at $1.7 trillion, with a P/E ratio of 25.08, a 52-week high of $785.73, a 52-week low of $520.26, and a dividend yield of 0.35%, according to Public.com. The average Wall Street price target is $787.47, per the same source, though Wells Fargo's new $796 call now sits above that consensus.

Meta's most recent quarterly earnings missed the mark. The company reported second-quarter 2026 earnings per share of $6.18, missing the $7.18 estimate by nearly 14%, down from $7.14 a year earlier, according to Public.com. Meta's next earnings report is scheduled for October 28, 2026, with analysts currently estimating EPS of $6.50.

A stock trading near its all-time high on a P/E over 25, coming off a quarter where it missed estimates by double digits, is now rallying hard on a two-week-old app with no disclosed revenue model attached to it yet. Bulls would say the market is pricing in a future product cycle, not last quarter's numbers. Skeptics would say that's exactly how AI hype gets ahead of the fundamentals it's supposed to be tracking.

A source called ICO Optics framed the surge as proof Meta is "uniquely positioned to dominate the consumer AI landscape," but that piece offered no new data beyond what CNBC had already reported and leaned entirely on inference rather than sourced facts.

What comes next

Meta is scheduled to preview its AI and wearable-device roadmap at its Meta Connect conference on Wednesday, September 23, according to Superpower Daily. That event is the next real test of whether Muse is a platform shift or a two-week download spike.

The open question Wall Street hasn't answered: does Muse generate revenue Meta can point to by its October 28 earnings report, or is this rally running on downloads and options flow that outpaced the underlying business? The $20 million short bet placed Monday suggests at least one large trader thinks the answer isn't obvious yet.