Meta’s AI agent Muse is now the No. 2 app in the US

Meta's AI Agent Muse Reaches No. 2 on US App Store

Meta's newest app, Muse, is off to a slower start than the company's other apps, like Meta AI or Threads.

Early Numbers Offer Insight into Muse's Popularity

According to new data provided by the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Muse has been downloaded north of 83,000 times on iOS in the United States. This pushed Muse into the No. 2 position on the App Store's Top Charts. However, its launch pales when compared with other recent app debuts from Meta, like Threads and Meta AI, the data indicates.

Comparison with Other Notable Consumer AI Apps

For instance, 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. Muse is also further behind when compared with another notable consumer AI app's launch: ChatGPT. In less than a week after its arrival, ChatGPT had topped half a million installs in the U.S., which was also its only market at the time.

Android Counterpart Fares Less Well

Its Android counterpart, however, is faring less well. Muse has only achieved a rank of No. 338 in the Productivity category on Google Play's app marketplace. (Its Android download numbers aren't yet available.) Muse is also available via the web and through WhatsApp, neither of which are being counted in these estimates.

Meta's Bet on Agentic AI

The app represents one of Meta's bigger bets to date. In short, the company believes that agents that work to get things done on people's behalf will be the future of consumer AI - and it's staking its claim on this emerging market.

Competition from Instinct

Meta, of course, is not alone in its pursuit of consumer-facing agentic AI. Every company has a horse in this race, it seems, from Google's Gemini Spark to Anthropic's Claude Cowork and beyond. But for simple-to-use agents aimed at the everyday person, the competition for now is between Meta's Muse and Instinct, a new AI agent that works over text messages and was recently valued at $2.5 billion.

Instinct's Capabilities and Features

Despite security concerns and an overly broad and permissive privacy policy, Silicon Valley insiders have been raving about Instinct's capabilities. This week, for example, Instinct has rolled out email addresses for all its users, and just announced it's building its own social network of sorts - that is, one person's Instinct agent can now talk to those belonging to their friends to coordinate plans.

Instinct's Potential Advantage

If agents are the future, then Instinct's ability to build a new social graph based on who people actually talk to and hang out with in real life could be ultimately more valuable than Meta's friend graph, which is a mix of people users actually know and those they just follow.

Muse's Launch Timing and Reputation Concerns

Over the past several days, Instinct also launched integrations with Stripe and 1Password, and a location-sharing feature so the agent can take on actions that require knowing your current location. Muse's launch timing could be another factor impacting its debut numbers. The agent, which requires users to provide Meta with more of their personal information, arrived only days after Meta agreed to a massive $18 billion multistate settlement in a lawsuit over social media's consumer harms.