What happened. The star of Meta’s Connect stage was not a pair of glasses but Muse. The agent’s shopping partners include Walmart, Best Buy, American Eagle, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Fanatics, Gap, Michael Kors, Sephora, Ulta and Wayfair. Payments run through Shop Pay and PayPal, the catalogue through Shopify, groceries through Instacart, and travel through Expedia soon. On hardware, Meta showed Muse Charm, a voice-driven pocket device, the third-generation Ray-Ban Meta, and Meta VR Glasses weighing about 100 grams, due in spring 2027 at $1,299.99. Muse will run hands-free on the glasses and recognise the product you are looking at. Meta is aiming for more than 100 AI glasses options by the end of the year.
The bigger picture. Three days earlier Amazon had blocked Muse from its site. Meta’s answer was to sign up Amazon’s rivals and to start shopping before the phone, on the face and in the pocket. It is an old wound. In 2021, when Apple’s iOS permission change broke ad measurement, Meta paid heavily for living on someone else’s platform. The hardware push is therefore not a gadget hobby. It is the move of a company that has learned it cannot reach the till unless it holds the door.
For executives: Walmart is on the partner list; Amazon is not. Whether a retailer opens its door to AI agents is no longer an IT decision. It is a distribution strategy decision.