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

Meta's newly launched AI agent, Muse, has secured the second position on the U.S. iOS App Store. According to data from Sensor Tower, the U.S.-exclusive app has surpassed 83,000 downloads on iOS since its Tuesday debut. While the app climbed from fourth place on Wednesday to second place today, its initial traction is modest compared to Meta's previous launches. For comparison, Threads secured over 4.3 million U.S. downloads on its first day, and the Meta AI app achieved 108,000 downloads during its debut. Muse also trails ChatGPT, which reached over 500,000 U.S. downloads in under a week, averaging roughly 83,300 daily installs.

The agent's performance varies significantly by platform. While Muse is rising on iOS, its Android counterpart currently ranks at number 338 in the Productivity category on Google Play, with download figures still undisclosed. These metrics do not account for users accessing Muse via WhatsApp or the web. Meta is positioning Muse to compete in a crowded agentic AI landscape that includes Google's Gemini Spark and Anthropic's Claude Cowork. Its most direct consumer rival, however, is Instinct, a text-based AI agent valued at $2.5 billion with $350 million in funding. Instinct recently introduced email addresses, Stripe and 1Password integrations, location-sharing, and agent-to-agent communication to coordinate plans.

For AI developers and product strategists, Muse's launch highlights the challenges of driving consumer adoption for highly integrated agentic systems. Unlike simple chatbots, agents require deeper access to personal data to perform tasks effectively. Meta's rollout comes immediately after the company agreed to an $18 billion multistate settlement over social media harms, which may fuel consumer privacy concerns. To win this market, practitioners must balance advanced agent capabilities, like Instinct's real-life social graph coordination, against the high trust barriers that legacy tech giants face when asking users for sensitive personal information.