Meta's Muse hits 5 million downloads, outpacing ChatGPT

Meta launched Muse on Sept. 8, and it became one of the most popular personal AI agent tools on the market, reaching 5 million downloads in the U.S. faster than ChatGPT did after its late-2022 release. That pace comes as Meta's core business remains overwhelmingly advertising-driven: $59.4 billion in ad sales in the second quarter accounted for 98% of its total.

Rather than placing ads inside Muse, Meta plans to charge for higher-usage subscription tiers and eventually transaction fees. Meta can still benefit indirectly by using Muse activity data to target ads across its family of apps, which reaches 3.6 billion daily active users.

That dynamic may put pure-play AI rivals at a disadvantage, since running agents can incur significant infrastructure costs and a rival without a lucrative legacy operation may be forced to introduce ads within the agent interface. That could push users seeking a clean experience toward Muse, strengthening Meta's position.