MetaâÂÂs AI companion, Muse, is now one of only a dozen mobile apps to have reached 10 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days on the market. According to new data from market intelligence provider Sensor Tower, Muse has seen 10.9 million downloads since its September debut, 10.2 million of which were in the United States.
Only 11 other apps to date have reached this type of post-launch milestone, said Sensor TowerâÂÂs Senior Insights Analyst Kara Lee. The most recent of these was MetaâÂÂs Threads, back in July 2023. Other apps that saw this kind of scale were largely mobile games, Lee noted.
MetaâÂÂs success is tied to the companyâÂÂs ability to scale its new apps by marketing them across its other services, which it has done with both Threads and Muse. Threads was built on top of InstagramâÂÂs social graph, and its content has been integrated into both Facebook and Instagram. However, Muse isnâÂÂt only benefiting from MetaâÂÂs ability to market the AI agent across its family of apps, which today includes 3.6 billion daily active users; the company is also heavily investing in advertising to drive new users to Muse.
Still, marketing an app and retaining users after the initial shine wears off are two different things. In this case, Muse is seeing better retention rates than its AI competitors like ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok.
In the U.S., the app had a 30% retention rate after 7 days and a 23% retention rate after 14 days. By comparison, its rivals saw an average of a 19% 7-day retention rate and a 16% 14-day retention rate, according to the firmâÂÂs data.
Muse also hit another milestone that demonstrates active engagement with the AI app. Its daily active users reached 2.5 million for the first time on October 16, a 15% week-over-week increase.
MetaâÂÂs latest AI app, which can handle various tasks on usersâ behalf, has seen breakout success since its debut. It shot up to No. 1 on the App Store, and, at one point, even outpaced some of the metrics ChatGPT saw following its launch. Its latest milestone sees it topping its rivals again, as ChatGPT saw 3.7 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days on the market. Grok and Claude saw only 500,000 and 200,000 U.S. downloads, respectively, in their first 40 days.
Globally, ChatGPT beat out Muse, having scaled to around 15 million global downloads in its first 40 days. But this isnâÂÂt a fair comparison, as ChatGPT benefited from a wider reach. Muse is only available in the U.S. and Canada for now, while ChatGPTâÂÂs app attracted attention from markets like Japan, Brazil, and Germany, too. (Japan, for instance, accounted for 25% of its global installs during its first 40 days.)
Since launching, Muse has retained its No. 1 rank on the U.S. App Store for all days except October 19, when streaming app Kick briefly beat it out. It has since reclaimed the top spot as of Tuesday. Muse has also been No. 1 on Google Play over the past 30 days.
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