Qwen also runs on open-weight models anyone can self-host. Alibaba has built a separate agent, Accio Work, aimed squarely at small exporters, a use case Muse doesn’t touch. Muse’s edge is trust architecture: an isolated secure virtual machine, an approval gate for sensitive actions, and a password vault Meta says the agent itself cannot see.
That gap matters for judging whether Muse actually succeeds. Qwen’s transaction volume is a real revenue signal already running through Alipay’s rails; Muse’s equivalent, a newer, US-only integration with Link by Stripe, hasn’t published comparable numbers yet. The figure worth watching next isn’t app store ranking, it’s completed checkouts and merchant sign-ups, since that’s where agentic shopping turns from a novelty into a true shift in market share.
For investors in retail, the strategy here, since this is such a new space, could be sector rotation rather than a single stock call. This is especially important since there is a bifurcation taking place. Alibaba is going deep on a closed loop it owns, natively executing purchases and tasks; Meta is going wide with a general-purpose agent that can route around apps it doesn’t own. See the diagrams below.