Meta’s Muse hits 10 million downloads in the US in 40 days, a milestone reached by only 11 other apps

Meta’s AI companion, Muse, is now one of dozens of mobile apps to reach 10 million downloads in the United States in its first 40 days on sale. According to new data from market intelligence provider Sensor Tower, Muse has recorded 10.9 million downloads since its September debut, including 10.2 million in the United States.

To date, only 11 other apps have reached this type of post-launch milestone, said Kara Lee, senior analytics analyst at Sensor Tower. The most recent of these was Meta’s Threads, in July 2023.

Other apps that have seen this type of scale have largely been mobile games, Lee noted, like Fortnite, PUBG Mobile, Pokémon GO and others. Besides Threads, Disney+ was the only other non-gaming app to be part of the exclusive club.

Meta’s success is linked to the company’s ability to scale its new applications by marketing them on its other services, which it has done with Threads and Muse. Threads was built on Instagram’s social graph and its content was integrated into both Facebook and Instagram. However, Muse not only benefits from Meta’s ability to commercialize the AI ​​agent into its family of applications, which today includes 3.6 billion daily active users; the company also invests heavily in advertising to attract new users to Muse.

According to Sensor Tower data, Meta allocated 39% of its total ad spend to the Muse marketplace in October, up from 23% last month. Additionally, Muse now ranks as the 21st brand in the U.S. in ad impressions this month, up from 73rd in September.

Yet marketing an app and retaining users after the initial luster has worn off are two different things. In this case, Muse records better retention rates than its AI competitors like ChatGPT, Claude and Grok.

In the United States, the app had a retention rate of 30% after 7 days and 23% after 14 days. In comparison, its competitors averaged a 7-day retention rate of 19% and a 14-day retention rate of 16%, according to company data.

Muse has also reached another milestone that demonstrates active engagement with the AI ​​application. Its daily active users reached 2.5 million for the first time on October 16, a 15% week-over-week increase.

Meta’s latest AI application, which can handle various tasks on behalf of users, has been wildly successful since its debut. It rose to #1 on the App Store and at one point even surpassed some of the metrics ChatGPT observed after its launch. Its latest milestone sees it once again surpass its competitors, as ChatGPT recorded 3.7 million downloads in the US in its first 40 days on the market. Grok and Claude only had 500,000 and 200,000 downloads in the United States in their first 40 days, respectively.

Globally, ChatGPT beat Muse, having reached around 15 million global downloads in its first 40 days. But that’s not a fair comparison, as ChatGPT has benefited from a wider reach. Muse is only available in the United States and Canada at the moment, while the ChatGPT app has also attracted attention from markets like Japan, Brazil, and Germany. (Japan, for example, accounted for 25% of its global installations in its first 40 days.)

Since its launch, Muse has held its top spot on the US App Store every day except October 19, when streaming app Kick briefly beat it. Since then, he has regained first place on Tuesday. Muse has also been #1 on Google Play for the last 30 days.