Meta’s new AI agent app, Muse, is climbing the charts but struggling to match the explosive debut velocity of its predecessors. Sensor Tower data reveals the app secured over 83,000 iOS downloads in the United States since its Tuesday launch. That volume pushed it to the No. 2 spot on the App Store’s Top Charts, a respectable showing that nonetheless looks modest next to Meta’s own history. Threads racked up 4.3 million U.S. downloads on day one. Even Meta AI, a less centralized tool, pulled in 108,000 installs during its debut.
The gap widens when you stack Muse against OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The chatbot hit half a million U.S. installs in under a week at launch. If you average that out, ChatGPT was pulling roughly 83,300 downloads daily from the start. Muse took twice as long to hit that same cumulative total. Android performance is even softer, with Muse sitting at No. 338 in the Productivity category on Google Play. These numbers don’t signal failure, but they do suggest consumers are hesitant to embrace another standalone AI interface from Meta, especially when web and WhatsApp integrations exist outside these download metrics.
Competition is heating up beyond Big Tech. Instinct, a text-based AI agent recently valued at $2.5 billion, is emerging as a serious rival. With $350 million in funding, it’s shipping features like user email addresses and agent-to-agent social coordination at breakneck speed. While Meta relies on its existing social graph, Instinct is building a new one based on actual communication patterns. This could prove more valuable for agentic tasks than Meta’s mix of friends and followers. Instinct also just integrated Stripe and 1Password, signaling a push into high-trust actions.
Timing likely hurt Muse’s initial traction. The app launched days after Meta agreed to an $18 billion multistate settlement regarding consumer harms on social media. Asking users to hand over more personal data for an agent that acts on their behalf is a tough sell when privacy trust is at a historic low. Silicon Valley may be buzzing about agentic AI, but mainstream adoption requires confidence. Meta is betting big that agents are the future, but if Instinct can solve the trust equation faster, Meta’s friend graph might not be enough to win the race.
