“It’s cool, it’s fun, it’s neat, it’s weird, it’s different. There’s nothing like it.” That is how Meta’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth, sold the Muse Charm, a palm-sized gadget Mark Zuckerberg pulled out as a surprise at the company’s Connect event in Menlo Park on Wednesday, 23 September 2026.
Here’s what it is, in plain terms. Think of a Tamagotchi, the 1990s digital pet, with a modern AI assistant inside. The Charm has a roughly 2in OLED touch screen, the same display type found in many smartphones, and you steer it with your thumb. A virtual Muse character sits in the middle of the screen, and you can change its looks, outfits and voice. An on-board 5G modem lets it reach Muse away from Wi-Fi, and a fingerprint sensor unlocks it.
Small enough for a keychain
Crypto Briefing compared its size to an AirPods charging case. You can wear it on a wrist strap, carry it in a pocket or hang it from a bag or keychain with a lanyard. The case is translucent, so the circuitry shows through the back and sides. There are cameras on the front and back, though Bloomberg reported they exist mainly to feed Muse visual information it can analyse. It plays music and video, has speakers and microphones, and charges over USB-C. It does not make phone or video calls. Set-up runs through the Muse app on an iPhone or Android phone.
Two Charms placed near each other can recognise one another and interact, according to Bloomberg’s sources. People with knowledge of the product call it a “holdable” rather than a wearable, a small device you pick up and talk to through the day.
Built in a hurry
The Charm came out of Meta’s new design lab, led by former Apple interface design chief Alan Dye, and its Superintelligence AI group. Dye and Billy Sorrentino, a top deputy from Apple, were two of the driving forces behind it and behind the character-based Muse interface, Bosworth said. Meta recruited them at the end of 2025. Bosworth said the team started on the concept in March, asking for hardware to launch within the year, and took about nine months to finish it. Inside the company it went by the name “Clawmagochi”, a nod to the OpenClaw AI assistant the developers liked. It began as a playful prototype until Zuckerberg told them to run a real programme. The company first aimed for 2027, but he pushed for a 2026 unveiling.
Zuckerberg said it would be on sale by December. Pricing is undecided, Bosworth said, though people familiar with the plans expect a price in the range of a smartwatch. Cellular carrier fees are not settled either. Crypto Briefing noted that only a handful of prototypes exist.
Bosworth was blunt that the Charm is not the core of Meta’s AI hardware plan. He called it “the classic v0” and said “we think it’s cool. It’s also not the core of the strategy”. He expects far more people to use Muse through their phones and Meta’s smart glasses. The first model is meant largely for Muse enthusiasts, and follow-up generations are possible if it sells. Muse itself launched on 8 September 2026, two weeks before the reveal, on iPhones, Android devices and the web.
Sources
- ‘There’s nothing like it’: Meta unveils dedicated ‘Charm’ device for using Muse AI – The Irish Times
- Meta unveils Muse Charm, a keychain-sized AI device for its Muse agent
