Meta's Muse hits nearly 600,000 downloads in first 5 days

Meta has spent years and tens of billions of dollars trying to find a breakout product beyond advertising. Its Reality Labs metaverse push and smart glasses efforts have yet to gain significant traction, and Wall Street has long applied a discount to Meta's stock because of its reliance on ads and failed diversification attempts. The launch of Muse, a personal AI agent that can perform tasks like sending emails, booking travel, and filling out forms, appears to be a turning point. Meta's efforts in Superintelligence and its acquisition of Scale AI to bring on founder Alexandr Wang now seem to be paying off.

The early numbers are striking: nearly 600,000 downloads in five days, a #1 App Store ranking ahead of ChatGPT, and a 6.6% stock jump on Sept. 9. Muse operates on a freemium model, free for basic tasks and charging $20 to $100 per month for premium tiers, and Meta could later add advertising to the free tier, as ChatGPT has begun doing. Social media reviews calling the agent "incredibly good" and "insanely good" at computer use suggest strong product-market fit, though privacy concerns have been raised.

To become a true game changer, Muse must sustain its adoption curve and prove it can generate meaningful revenue beyond advertising. If it does, Meta may finally answer Wall Street's biggest question about its growth story, and the stock could re-rate higher, much as Alphabet's did after Google Gemini's success. The test is whether Muse establishes itself as the leading personal AI agent, and whether privacy concerns or competitive responses slow its momentum.