While consumer interest in AI tools grows, companies like Meta and OpenAI shift focus to enterprise markets where monetisation proves more viable, signalling a new phase in AI adoption.
The latest wave of consumer-facing artificial intelligence tools looks, at first glance, like a renewed push to make assistants part of everyday life. Meta has launched Muse, OpenAI has introduced Dots, and Instinct has drawn attention with a higher valuation for its task-handling agent. Yet the commercial question has hardly moved: consumer interest is real, but convincing enough people to pay remains expensive and uncertain.
According to Axios, Meta has now extended Muse beyond personal use and into small business, a sign that the company is looking harder at commercial customers to justify the scale of its AI spending. The service is being positioned as a digital operations tool for firms that cannot easily hire specialist staff, and Meta says about a third of early users have linked it with business accounts. The company has also kept the product structure relatively broad, with the core service free for most users and optional paid tiers at $20 and $100 a month.
That shift matters because the main issue is not simply whether these systems can do more. It is whether they can do so at a cost that makes economic sense. Reporting from Reuters and industry analysis has repeatedly pointed to the mismatch between high operating costs and limited consumer willingness to subscribe. The result is a business model that looks stronger when aimed at companies, which are more likely to pay for workflow automation, integration and administrative support.
The numbers help explain why the market is still searching for a durable model. Andreessen Horowitz’s State of Markets report, based on data from PNC, found that in May only 2.2% of consumers were paying for an AI service, at an average spend of about $31 a month. Bank of America estimated in March that roughly 3% of Americans were paying, while Menlo’s September survey suggested broader daily use but still left a gap between engagement and monetisation. Put simply, usage is rising faster than revenue.
OpenAI’s Dots appears to reflect the same reality. According to TechRadar and PYMNTS, the product is built around always-on agents that can operate across calendars, apps and messaging platforms, while the company has initially restricted access to paying users in Pro and Business Premium tiers. That design signals a clear attempt to turn AI assistance into something closer to a work tool than a novelty. Meta appears to be following a similar path, while Instinct is trying to monetise through commissions on purchases made through its agent. The broader lesson is unchanged: the consumer market may still expand, but the companies most likely to capture the largest returns are those that can sell into enterprise use cases, where the economics are easier to defend.
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