Meta’s September 8, 2026 launch of Muse—a proactive personal AI agent running on its own secure cloud VM with browser access, app connectors, and long-running task execution—set the benchmark and triggered immediate competitive responses. OpenAI followed on September 29 with dots, always-on agents powered by GPT-6 Astra that maintain persistent cloud computers and integrate across thousands of apps. Anthropic opened a waitlist for Claude Duet in late October, while xAI’s Grok Bot and Microsoft’s Autopilot (formerly Scout) had already reached preview stages earlier in the year; Google plans a consumer Gemini Agent rollout by year-end. These rapid releases highlight the shift toward persistent, agentic systems with human approval gates, positioning the pre-2027 window as a crowded race defined by model capability, privacy architecture, and ecosystem integrations rather than first-mover advantage alone.