Meta’s AI companion app Muse has passed 10 million downloads in the United States within 40 days of launch, a mark only 11 other apps have reached. Sensor Tower puts total downloads at 10.9 million since the September debut, 10.2 million of them in the US.
Kara Lee, a senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower, said only 11 other apps have matched that post-launch pace. The most recent was Meta’s own Threads, back in July 2023. The rest were largely mobile games, among them Fortnite, PUBG Mobile and Pokémon GO. Besides Threads, Disney+ was the only other non-game app to make the list.
Meta has used its other services to grow Muse, as it did with Threads, which was built on Instagram’s social graph and folded into both Facebook and Instagram. Across its apps the company counts 3.6 billion daily active users. It is also spending heavily on advertising. In October it put 39% of its total ad spend behind Muse, up from 23% the month before, and the app now ranks as the 21st largest brand in the US by advertising impressions, up from 73rd in September.
Retention is where Muse is pulling ahead of rival AI apps. In the US it kept 30% of users after seven days and 23% after 14 days, against an average of 19% and 16% for ChatGPT, Claude and Grok, according to Sensor Tower. Daily active users passed 2.5 million for the first time on 16th October, a 15% rise on the previous week.
The app reached No. 1 on the App Store after launch and at one point ran ahead of some of the figures ChatGPT recorded after its own debut. ChatGPT saw 3.7 million US downloads in its first 40 days, while Grok and Claude managed 500,000 and 200,000 respectively.
Globally, ChatGPT came out ahead, with around 15 million downloads in its first 40 days, but it reached more markets. Muse is available only in the US and Canada for now, whereas ChatGPT drew interest in countries including Japan, Brazil and Germany. Japan alone accounted for 25% of its global installs during those first 40 days.
Since launch, Muse has held the top spot on the US App Store every day except 19 October, when the streaming app Kick briefly overtook it. Muse reclaimed the lead by Tuesday and it has been No. 1 on Google Play over the past 30 days.
