Meta’s new AI agent app, Muse, has climbed to the No. 2 spot on the US App Store’s top charts, drawing more than 83,000 iOS downloads in the United States since its Tuesday launch, according to estimates from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The app is currently limited to US users, and its rise up the charts marks one of Meta’s most ambitious pushes into consumer-facing agentic AI to date.
The milestone comes days after Meta agreed to an $18 billion multistate settlement over claims related to social media’s consumer harms — a backdrop that could weigh on how quickly users adopt a product that requires handing over more personal information.
How Muse’s debut stacks up against Meta’s earlier launches
Muse’s early numbers are modest when placed next to Meta’s previous app debuts. Threads, the company’s text-based Twitter rival, was downloaded more than 4.3 million times in the US on its launch day. The standalone Meta AI app saw 108,000 US downloads during its debut.
The comparison with ChatGPT is similarly uneven. In less than a week after its arrival, ChatGPT topped half a million installs in the US, which was its only market at the time. Divided evenly, that works out to roughly 83,300 downloads per day at its debut — a figure Muse took about twice as long to reach.
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That gap does not necessarily signal a weak launch. Muse has been climbing steadily: it sat at No. 4 on the US App Store on Wednesday before moving up to No. 2. On Android, however, the picture is less flattering. The app has only reached No. 338 in the Productivity category on Google Play, and Android download figures are not yet available.
Sensor Tower’s estimates also exclude usage through the web and WhatsApp, both of which Meta offers as access points for Muse. That means the true engagement picture is likely broader than the download data suggests.
Why Meta is betting on agents — and who else is racing
Muse represents Meta’s wager that AI agents capable of completing tasks on a user’s behalf will define the next phase of consumer AI. The company has framed the shift as comparable in strategic weight to its 2021 rebrand to Meta Platforms, when it pivoted toward the metaverse.
The competitive field is crowded. Google has pushed forward with Gemini Spark, Anthropic has Claude Cowork, and a wave of startups are targeting narrower use cases. Among consumer-facing agents, the most closely watched rival may be Instinct, an AI agent that operates over text messages and was recently valued at $2.5 billion.
Instinct has moved quickly. This week it rolled out email addresses for all users and announced it is building a social network in which one person’s agent can coordinate plans with a friend’s. It has also launched integrations with Stripe and 1Password, plus a location-sharing feature that lets the agent take actions requiring real-time location data. The company now has $350 million at its disposal.
Some observers argue that Instinct’s approach — building a social graph around who people actually communicate with — could prove more durable than Meta’s friend graph, which blends real connections with passive follows. Instinct has drawn scrutiny, too, over security concerns and a privacy policy that critics describe as broad and permissive.
What to watch next
Muse’s trajectory over the coming weeks will be a test of whether Meta can convert its enormous existing user base into agent adoption. The app’s climb to No. 2 suggests momentum, but the Android ranking of No. 338 indicates the company has significant ground to cover on Google’s platform.
Meta will also face questions about data handling. The company has been fined multiple times by the US Federal Trade Commission over privacy violations and has weathered several large data scandals. How Muse handles user information — and how regulators respond — could shape adoption as much as feature quality does.
Meanwhile, Instinct’s rapid shipping cadence and fresh capital give it room to expand its feature set before Meta can establish a lead. If agents do become the primary interface for consumer AI, the battle between Meta’s distribution advantage and Instinct’s social-graph strategy may be the contest to watch.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Early adoption metrics and valuations in the AI sector are volatile and may change rapidly.
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