Meta is starting to gain favor with Wall Street after launching its new AI app, Muse, on Tuesday. The company's move into agentic AI has also become a popular discussion point on X among those in the industry. Fresh data now provides a clearer picture of how well Muse is catching on with its intended audience of American consumers.

According to new figures from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Muse has been downloaded more than 83,000 times on iOS within the United States. (For the time being, the app is only available in the U.S.)

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This lifted Muse to the No. 2 spot on the App Store's Top Charts, but the data shows its debut is modest compared to other recent app launches from Meta, such as Threads and Meta AI. Threads, for example, racked up over 4.3 million U.S. downloads on its first day, while the Meta AI app recorded 108,000 U.S. downloads during its launch. Muse also trails another prominent consumer AI app's debut: ChatGPT. Within less than a week of arriving, ChatGPT had surpassed half a million installs in the U.S., which was its sole market at the time. Spread evenly, that would mean ChatGPT averaged 83.3K downloads per day at launch — a figure Muse needed twice as long to reach.

None of this automatically suggests Muse's launch is struggling — it may simply be getting off to a somewhat slower start. The app continues to rise on the iOS charts, having climbed from 4th place on the U.S. App Store on Wednesday to No. 2 as of today. Its Android version, though, is not performing as well. Muse has only reached a rank of No. 338 in the Productivity category on Google Play's marketplace. (Android download figures are not yet available.)

Muse can also be accessed via the web and through WhatsApp, neither of which is included in these estimates. Even so, Muse's numbers, though preliminary, are worth keeping an eye on, since the app represents one of Meta's most significant bets to date. Essentially, the company believes that agents capable of getting things done on people's behalf will define the future of consumer AI — and it's claiming its stake in this emerging market. (This is at least as consequential a move as when the company rebranded from Facebook to Meta in pursuit of its metaverse ambitions.)

Meta, naturally, isn't the only player chasing consumer-facing agentic AI. It seems every company has a stake in this race, from Google's Gemini Spark to Anthropic's Claude Cowork and beyond. But when it comes to simple-to-use agents designed for the average person, the contest for now is between Meta's Muse and Instinct, a new AI agent that operates over text messages and was recently valued at $2.5 billion. Despite security concerns and an overly broad and permissive privacy policy, Silicon Valley insiders have been praising Instinct's capabilities. While many other agents focus more narrowly on tasks like managing work or family life, Instinct appears to be the one to beat, given the $350 million it now has at its disposal and how quickly it's shipping new features.

This week, for instance, Instinct rolled out email addresses for all its users, and just announced it's building its own kind of social network — meaning one person's Instinct agent can now communicate with those belonging to their friends to coordinate plans. If agents are the future, then Instinct's ability to build a new social graph based on who people actually talk to and spend time with in real life could ultimately prove more valuable than Meta's friend graph, which blends people users genuinely know with those they merely follow. Over the past several days, Instinct also launched integrations with Stripe and 1Password, plus a location-sharing feature so the agent can carry out actions that require knowing your current location.

The timing of Muse's launch could be another factor affecting its debut numbers. The agent, which requires users to give Meta more of their personal information, arrived only days after Meta agreed to a massive $18 billion multistate settlement in a lawsuit over social media's consumer harms. The company's reputation has also absorbed many other legal blows over the years, as it's been entangled in massive data scandals and has been targeted and fined multiple times by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over privacy violations.