Investors discover their new favorite consumer AI play in Meta. Options volume is surging

Options traders are treating Meta like it's the next big thing for the consumer artificial intelligence trade. Trading volume was about 4.5 times the 30-day average in Meta options Monday, with almost $3.9 billion in total premium exchanged according to Cboe LiveVol and SpotGamma data. More than twice as many calls were likely bought versus puts, and seven of the top 10 trades were either bullish or neutral. Shares of the social media giant surged 12% Monday to within 7% of the stock's all-time high in August 2025, adding to what's now a 21-percent rally since the company unveiled details of its personal assistant Muse. The company also announced plans to develop a subsea cable, called Petal, to send data across the Atlantic ocean. The most actively traded options contracts Monday were zero-day-to-expiry options with strikes that are now in the money, ranging from in-the-money 720 to 745-strike calls. Looking beyond that, there was heavy volume in the 775 and 800-strike expiring in mid-October. "The inflows in options are huge," said Brent Kochuba, founder of options analytics platform SpotGamma. "It seems like AI hype around their Muse." Meta's Muse AI personal agent tool has only been out for nearly two weeks, and it's topping the app store charts, racking 730,000 downloads over about five days after it launched on Sep. 8, according to a CNBC report citing analytics firm Sensor Tower. More than $1 billion in call premium traded was likely initiated by call-buyers, SpotGamma data show, and more than $850 million was tied to selling, suggesting a bullish bias balanced by hedging to the upside as well. In fact the biggest dollar-size trader of the session took what appeared to be around a net $20 million short position across a handful of spread trades that centered around the sale of a one-by-two 710/765-strike call spread expiring Oct. 16 that makes money if Meta slips below $740.