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

Meta's AI agent now ranks second in US app downloads.

Meta's new AI agent, Muse, has reached the No. 2 position on the U.S. iOS App Store charts following its launch. Sensor Tower data indicates Muse has garnered over 83,000 downloads in the United States. Despite this ranking, Muse's launch download numbers are considerably lower than Meta's previous app debuts like Threads (over 4.3 million U.S. downloads on launch day) and Meta AI (108,000 U.S. downloads during its debut). Muse also lags behind ChatGPT's launch performance, which achieved half a million U.S. installs in less than a week. While Muse's iOS performance shows upward momentum, its Android counterpart has only reached No. 338 in the Productivity category. These download figures do not include access via the web or WhatsApp.

Muse's slower initial adoption rate compared to Meta's prior launches and competitors like ChatGPT suggests a more gradual user acquisition strategy or potential lingering user hesitation, possibly influenced by Meta's recent $18 billion settlement regarding consumer harms and its history of privacy violations. This cautious reception for a product that requires significant personal data sharing highlights the ongoing challenge for large tech companies in building trust with consumers in the burgeoning agentic AI market. The company's significant investment and belief in agentic AI as the future position this performance as a key indicator of whether its strategy can overcome these trust deficits and compete effectively against rivals like Instinct, which has secured substantial funding and is rapidly iterating on features and social integrations.

The competitive landscape for consumer-facing AI agents is intensifying, with Meta's Muse and the fast-growing Instinct app emerging as key contenders. Instinct's rapid feature development, including unique social networking capabilities based on real-world interactions and integrations with services like Stripe and 1Password, presents a compelling alternative for users seeking AI assistance for everyday tasks. If agentic AI is indeed the future, the ability of companies like Instinct to leverage and potentially redefine social graphs, rather than relying on existing ones, could prove more valuable than Meta's established user connections. The success of these different approaches will likely shape the next wave of AI consumer applications and determine which platforms best capture user engagement and data.