Meta shares rose 27 percent in September, marking the strongest monthly rally since 2022, CNBC reported on Sept. 30 (local time).

Meta shares closed at $725.18 on the day, up sharply from the end-August close of $572.34. The rise is seen as the result of recent momentum in its artificial intelligence business lifting the stock. Wall Street is focusing on Muse, a personal AI agent app Meta introduced on Sept. 8. The service spread rapidly after surpassing OpenAI's ChatGPT in Apple iOS downloads.

Meta also put its AI strategy front and centre at Connect, its annual developer event in September. Mark Zuckerberg positioned Muse as the central pillar of Meta's product and business strategy, and unveiled new hardware such as the 'Muse Charm' AI pendant. The market's expectations have grown on signs Meta is linking AI not as a simple feature add-on but to its core product lineup and hardware.

Competition is also intensifying. As Meta targets a major business opportunity in the early AI agent market, OpenAI also rolled out its 'Dots' agent tool on Sept. 29. Meta also launched a new business division called the Meta Enterprise Platform and recruited CJ Desai, who had been chief executive of MongoDB, to lead it. It also unveiled 'Muse for Small Business' agent technology, moving to expand its consumer hit into the enterprise market.

The market sees Meta's strength as rooted in its consumer services base. Bank of America Global Research said in a Sept. 29 report that the enterprise AI solutions market, including cloud capacity, is expected to exceed $1 trillion by 2028, and that Meta's consumer data and communication apps could be an advantage in AI sales to consumer-goods-focused companies. It added it expects the Meta model API to be deployed on major hyperscaler platforms.

Meta's September performance is also unusual by recent-year standards. The only time Meta's monthly gain was larger than this was in November 2022, when OpenAI launched ChatGPT. At the time, Meta began a sweeping cost-efficiency drive and rebounded from a sharp selloff.

The September rise ranks as Meta's fifth-highest monthly performance on record. Over the period, Meta outpaced all other major tech stocks and also far exceeded the Nasdaq's rise of about 2 percent.

Amid the run, the market's focus is on whether Meta can avoid letting the consumer AI app hit end as a one-off event and expand into the enterprise platform and agent markets. Meta has already accelerated the pace of its AI rollout, releasing in a month a series of offerings including a personal service, hardware, small-business technology and a newly created enterprise organisation.