Meta's AI Agent Muse Reaches No. 2 on US App Store as Early Downloads Trail Rivals

Muse is currently limited to the United States. Sensor Tower's estimates put it at No. 2 on the App Store's Top Charts, up from No. 4 on Wednesday, according to TechCrunch. The estimates do not include usage through Muse's web version or WhatsApp, both of which are also available.

The app's early pace is slower than Meta's own recent launches. Threads was downloaded more than 4.3 million times in the U.S. on its launch day, and the Meta AI app saw 108,000 U.S. downloads during its debut, the data show. Muse's cumulative U.S. iOS downloads are below those figures.

ChatGPT also started faster. It topped half a million U.S. installs in less than a week after launching, when the U.S. was its only market. Spread evenly, that would mean ChatGPT averaged about 83,300 downloads per day at its debut, a level Muse took about twice as long to reach, according to the data.

On Android, Muse is further behind. It has reached only No. 338 in the Productivity category on Google Play, and Android download numbers are not yet available.

TechCrunch reported that Meta is beginning to win over Wall Street after the Tuesday launch and that its agentic AI effort is a hot topic on X among industry players. Meta believes agents that get things done on people's behalf will be the future of consumer AI, the report said, making Muse one of its bigger bets.

The company is not alone. The consumer agent field includes Google's Gemini Spark and Anthropic's Claude Cowork, among others. For simple-to-use agents aimed at everyday people, TechCrunch reported that competition is currently between Meta's Muse and Instinct, a new AI agent that works over text messages and was recently valued at $2.5 billion.

Despite security concerns and an overly broad and permissive privacy policy, Silicon Valley insiders have praised Instinct's capabilities, according to TechCrunch. Instinct now has $350 million at its disposal and has shipped features quickly. This week it rolled out email addresses for all users and announced it is building a social network of sorts, allowing one person's Instinct agent to talk to friends' agents to coordinate plans.

Instinct also launched integrations with Stripe and 1Password and a location-sharing feature so the agent can take actions requiring knowledge of a user's current location. TechCrunch reported that if agents are the future, Instinct's ability to build a social graph based on whom people actually talk to and hang out with could ultimately be more valuable than Meta's friend graph, which mixes people users know with those they just follow.

TechCrunch noted that Muse's launch timing could be another factor in its debut numbers. The agent requires users to provide Meta with more personal information, and it arrived only days after Meta agreed to an $18 billion multistate settlement in a lawsuit over social media's consumer harms. Meta has also faced data scandals and multiple fines from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over privacy violations.