Meta's Muse Hits 10M U.S. Downloads in 40 Days, Outpacing ChatGPT

Meta Platforms (META) has a hit on its hands in Muse, its consumer AI agent app. According to figures from app-intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Muse passed 10 million U.S. downloads within 40 days of launch, making it only the 12th app to reach that mark since Sensor Tower began tracking in 2015. Sensor Tower counted 10.2 million U.S. installs, and about 10.9 million across all markets. Muse is available only in the U.S. and Canada, so the second figure is not a worldwide count, according to trade coverage. The numbers were reported by TechCrunch and other outlets and are Sensor Tower estimates, not figures published by Meta.

Downloads: well ahead of the AI field

By our calculation, Muse's U.S. total is about 2.8 times ChatGPT's first-40-day figure, roughly 20 times Grok's and roughly 50 times Claude's. The comparison is about launch pace, not size today. ChatGPT reached about 15 million downloads worldwide in its first 40 days, more than Muse, according to the same coverage, because it launched in more markets. Muse went live in the U.S. on September 8, per trade coverage, which puts day 40 at October 18. The only app to reach the milestone earlier than Muse in recent years was Threads in July 2023, and Sensor Tower said nine of the others were mobile games.

Retention and engagement

Muse's retention is 11 percentage points higher at day 7 and 7 points higher at day 14, by our calculation. Retention matters here because downloads can be bought with advertising, while users who stay are the better sign of product fit. Muse's daily active users reached 2.5 million on October 16, up 15% from a week earlier, according to the same reporting. Not every account names which rivals sit in the comparison group, which one report listed as ChatGPT, Claude and Grok.

Meta is spending heavily to promote it

Sensor Tower estimates that Muse accounted for 39% of Meta's U.S. advertising spend in October, up from 23% in September, and that its rank by advertising impressions among U.S. brands climbed from 73rd to 21st. Earlier Sensor Tower data, relayed by trade coverage, showed Meta ramping paid promotion on September 16, when downloads rose 73% day over day, and giving Muse up to half of its own daily house ad impressions in late September. That means some of Muse's growth is being bought. Meta has published no install, usage or subscriber numbers for Muse, per that coverage, so the download and retention figures rest on Sensor Tower's panel and models, which the firm says are meant to show trends and may not be exact for any one app.

ChatGPT and the app-store race

The report also said ChatGPT's U.S. downloads fell 25% over the past 30 days compared with the 30 days before. Muse spent most of the period at the top of the U.S. App Store and has traded places with other apps in recent days, according to the coverage. One report also said Meta suspended Muse's conversation-sharing feature after security researchers found shared chats could expose sensitive information, and that the investigation was continuing. For more on the AI race, see our coverage of OpenAI's revenue run rate.

Sources: Sensor Tower (the data provider) and TechCrunch. Details on launch dates, the privacy issue and earlier milestones come from trade coverage of Sensor Tower's reports. We could not open Sensor Tower's report directly, so confirm figures there. We have no verified quote for META shares, so none is given.