Meta's Muse Agent Tops ChatGPT on iOS, Hits 2.5 Million Downloads

Meta's Muse AI agent has overtaken ChatGPT as the top free app on Apple's U.S. iOS App Store, racking up more than 2.5 million downloads in roughly two weeks since its September 8 launch, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower.

The milestone marks the most aggressive consumer push yet into the AI agent market by CEO Mark Zuckerberg — and the first sign that autonomous digital assistants, until now largely a developer phenomenon, might find a mass audience.

The numbers behind the surge

Muse passed OpenAI's ChatGPT to claim the No. 1 spot among free iOS apps in the U.S. on Friday, Sensor Tower data shows. It reached that position roughly two weeks after launch. Over its first five days, from September 8 onward, the app drew 730,000 downloads.

As of Monday, Muse sat ahead of ChatGPT, Polymarket and Kashi in the U.S. iOS free-app rankings. It also leads rival AI apps including Anthropic's Claude, xAI's Grok, and Meta's own Meta AI app.

The head-to-head comparison with competitors is instructive. During the same 13-day post-launch window, Muse's cumulative downloads exceeded both Claude, which recorded 400,000 downloads, and Grok, which logged 200,000. ChatGPT, the incumbent category leader, obtained 3.1 million downloads over that same period.

Sensor Tower cautioned that the comparison is imperfect because the apps had staggered releases across Apple's App Store and Google Play, which affects the totals. Breaking Muse's 2.5 million-plus downloads down by platform, the firm said the app has garnered around 1.5 million downloads on iOS and 1.1 million on Android's app store as of Monday.

The stakes here are straightforward. Consumer AI is currently a land grab, and app-store rankings have become a real-time proxy for which companies are converting AI investment into actual usage. Meta, which has spent years monetizing attention through advertising, now has a credible entry in the next category: agents that act on users' behalf across the web.

What Muse actually does

Meta pitched the app as a way for consumers to manage and direct supercharged digital assistants capable of performing tasks across the web, such as filling out electronic forms and organizing email inboxes. The app runs on Meta's Muse Spark family of AI models.

The launch represents Zuckerberg's major push into the AI agent market — a category that the freely available OpenClaw tool helped popularize earlier this year among developers and technology enthusiasts. Meta's bet is that agents can move beyond that niche.

"I think up to this point most of the agentic use cases have not really been for normal people," Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon told CNBC in a "Squawk on the Street" interview on Monday. "Now you've got Meta's Muse and other agents out there that are starting to maybe get more potential for more broad-based adoption."

Markets respond

Investors noticed. Meta's stock surged more than 11% on Monday. Wells Fargo lifted its price target on the company's shares to $796, according to multiple reports.

The monetization model is notable for what it is not: advertising. The Muse app is free to use, but Meta offers monthly subscriptions at $20 or $100, depending on usage. For a company whose revenue is overwhelmingly built on its core online advertising business, subscriptions would represent a meaningfully different way to make money from AI.

Amazon blocks Muse; Shopify leans in

The agent's growing popularity is producing ripple effects on the websites it visits — and not everyone is welcoming it.

Amazon has blocked Muse from accessing its shopping site, citing privacy and security risks. GeekWire was first to report the move.

Amazon said it received no advance notice that Muse would access its store, and it outlined several concerns. The company said the agent bypasses the personalization and other features built into the shopping experience. Amazon also said Muse appears to capture and store customer credentials and to scrape account data.

"We think it's fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions about whether or not to participate," an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.

Shopify took the opposite approach. CEO Tobias Lütke announced Monday that the e-commerce platform is partnering with Muse to allow agentic checkout in its online stores.

The split between the two e-commerce giants previews what is likely to become a recurring negotiation across the web: sites can either treat autonomous agents as hostile traffic or as a new sales channel — and agents that store credentials without permission will test that tolerance quickly.

Safety questions and a shaky track record

Meta's debut of Muse arrives amid broader societal concerns around AI safety and cybersecurity risks that have rocked the tech industry over the past few weeks.

The company also carries significant baggage into the launch. Meta recently agreed to pay roughly $17 billion to settle with a coalition of state attorneys general who had sued the company for misrepresenting alleged harms to children and teenagers caused by apps like Facebook and Instagram.

Rasgon flagged privacy as the open question hanging over a data-hungry personal agent from that same company. "They care about security, I don't know how much they care about privacy," he said, referring to whether the personal-data-hungry Muse app will sting Meta in the long run.

There is also the question of durability. Other AI services have experienced similar boom times upon release and failed to remain blockbusters. OpenAI's Sora is one example. Meta's own Vibes AI video tool, which helped bolster downloads of the Meta AI app when it launched last September, is another.

Muse's 2.5 million downloads prove consumer appetite for agents exists. Whether Amazon's blockade, subscription conversion, or privacy scrutiny erodes that momentum will determine if Muse becomes the category's first durable consumer hit or its latest cautionary tale.