Meta’s Muse assistant is reaching people who had not used AI, according to Meta President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick. “The people that are using it are actually people that have never used AI before”, she said at the Wall Street Journal’s technology conference on 4 November, where she also put the average product sold through Muse at “about $200” (WSJ video).
She repeated the 10 million user figure and said “only 20% of American small businesses use any form of AI”. By our arithmetic, that leaves 80% that do not, on her figure.
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The key insight:Meta President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick said Muse’s users are people who have never used AI before, that the average product sold on it is about $200, and that only 20% of American small businesses use any form of AI; by our arithmetic that leaves 80% that do not.
Asked what edge Meta has in the competition for compute, Powell McCormick said the “number one downloaded app today is Muse” and that its users “find it very easy to use, friendly, if you will”.
On scale she said: “We just started and we’re at 10 million users already with Muse”. Mark Zuckerberg gave the same 10 million figure in October (our piece).
What Meta President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick said about Muse and small businesses at the WSJ technology conference on 4 November 2026. Source: WSJ video, our machine transcript. All figures are Meta’s; 80% is our arithmetic.
What Was Posted on X
Interesting @Muse comment from @DinaPowellMcC tied to AI and this week’s elections
“The people that are using it [muse] are actually people that have never used AI before…”
“One of the things that that came out of the polling last night was that people that use AI are much more favorable on AI.” $META @WSJ
— Rich Greenfield, LightShed 🔦 (@richlightshed) Nov 06 18:07
Rich Greenfield of LightShed posted these two remarks by Dina Powell McCormick from the WSJ session at 18:07 UTC on 6 November, calling the Muse comment “tied to AI and this week’s elections”. The quotations in this piece come from our transcript of the WSJ’s video.
Commerce and Small Businesses
Powell McCormick described Muse as a commerce channel as well as an assistant. “So the average amount of a product being sold is about $200”, she said, adding that “our connector partners are very happy” and naming Plaid, DoorDash and Stripe.
On small businesses she said “only 20% of American small businesses use any form of AI” and cited a study by Ramp for the claim that the businesses using it have increased their market share and revenuegrowth. She did not give the study’s figures, and we have not read it. Meta has said at least 500 million small businesses use its apps (our piece).
Asked when Muse would start charging, she said Meta’s products “started out that way” before a “path to monetization”, and that Meta had asked small businesses in focus groups whether they would pay, with “a lot of enthusiasm around that”.
The Polling She Cited
Powell McCormick tied Muse to the day-earlier US election: “One of the things that came out of the polling last night was that people that use AI are much more favorable on AI”. She did not name the poll. The exit-poll write-ups we read from CBS News and from NBC, via TIME, cover voters’ views of AI and data centres but do not split them by whether voters use AI, so we could not check that line. Our coverage of partisan views on data centres is here (our piece).
Our Numbers
By our arithmetic, her 20% figure leaves 80% of American small businesses not using any form of AI. The 10 million user figure is the same one Zuckerberg gave in October; she did not give a newer count.
Connecting the Coverage
On Muse engagement, a chart credited to Morgan Stanley showed 73% of users active on day one and 23% by day 14 (our piece), and users gave Muse 7.5 minutes a day against 23 for ChatGPT (our piece). Meta has opened Muse video calls in the US (our piece) and Zuckerberg said its new models are less likely to forget key information (our piece). At the same session Powell McCormick said a governor-elect had asked to meet Meta about its investment (our piece).
The Structural Read
As we read the session, Powell McCormick presented Muse as a distribution answer to the compute question: asked about Meta’s edge in compute, she named Muse’s downloads and new-to-AI users.
As we read it, the $200 average sale and the named payment and delivery partners place Muse in commerce as well as chat, by her account.
As we read the poll remark, her claim that AI users view AI more favourably is unverified here: she did not name the poll, and the exit-poll write-ups we read do not split voters by AI use.
Dina Powell McCormick, WSJ Tech, 4 November 2026
“We just started and we’re at 10 million users already with Muse.”
Three Implications
FOR META Powell McCormick tied Muse’s user base and its commerce to Meta’s case in the competition for compute; Meta has not published data behind the new-to-AI or $200 figures.
FOR SMALL BUSINESSES Her 20% figure, if accurate, leaves 80% of American small businesses not using any form of AI, by our arithmetic; she cited a Ramp study we have not read for gains among those that do.
FOR READING THE POLL CLAIM The polling she cited was not named, so the link between AI use and favourable views of AI rests on her account.
The analysis says: “The second curve is product capability — what users of your specific product can actually do, end-to-end, in production.”
As we read it, Powell McCormick’s account of Muse users who had not used AI before is a claim about that second curve; the analysis does not discuss Muse or Meta.
What Is Not Established
Meta has not published how many Muse users had never used AI before, or how the $200 average is calculated. The quotations come from our machine transcript of the WSJ’s video of the session, not an official transcript. The poll she cited was not named.
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Meta President and Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick said Muse’s users are people who “have never used AI before”, that the average product sold on it is “about $200”, and that “only 20% of American small businesses use any form of AI”. Meta has not published data behind the first two figures.
A note on sourcing. Quotations come from our machine transcript of the Wall Street Journal’s own video of the session, linked in the text; her title is as Meta’s leadership page gives it. The 80% figure is our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
