Meta’s Muse has become the 12th app to reach 10 million US downloads within 40 days of launch. The personal AI agent debuted on September 8 and is available on iPhone and Android in the US and Canada.
The new Sensor Tower report, which tracks app launches back to October 2015, puts Muse in rare company. Nine of the 12 apps that hit the mark were mobile games, and the most recent one was Meta’s own Threads in July 2023. Sensor Tower did not name the full list.
Muse beat ChatGPT, Grok, and Claude by a wide margin in its first 40 days
For the same 40-day window in the US, Sensor Tower counts far fewer downloads for the AI apps Muse is up against.
- ChatGPT: 3.7 million US downloads
- Grok: 500,000 US downloads
- Claude: 200,000 US downloads
The comparison is not perfectly like for like. Sensor Tower has noted that Grok and Claude were iOS-only in their first five days, while Muse launched on both iOS and Android.
Sensor Tower put Muse past 5 million downloads at the end of September, in the middle of a 12-day run at the top of the US App Store. Muse has since slipped to second place.
ChatGPT is now the fourth most downloaded free app in the US, with Claude in seventh and Grok in 34th. ChatGPT’s US downloads have also dropped 25% over the past 30 days compared with the 30 days before that.
Muse keeps more US users after 7 and 14 days than its AI rivals
Muse averages a 30% retention rate after 7 days and 23% after 14 days among US users, according to Sensor Tower. ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok average 19% after a week and 16% after two weeks.
Retention measures how many users open an app again a set number of days after installing it. Analysts often treat it as a better health check than raw downloads, since a download alone says nothing about whether the app sticks.
Muse posted those retention numbers while drawing scrutiny over security, including a serious security flaw in the Muse Mac app reported in September.
Meta is putting a growing share of its US ad budget behind Muse
Muse accounted for 39% of Meta’s US advertising spend so far in October, up from 23% in September. It also climbed from 73rd to 21st among US brands ranked by advertising impressions.
Sensor Tower dated the start of the ad ramp to September 16, when daily downloads jumped 73% day over day. Between September 14 and 27, Muse took up to half of Meta’s daily house ad impressions, with Facebook and WhatsApp giving up share.
