Meta’s AI companion app, Muse, has passed 10 million U.S. downloads in its first 40 days. Only 11 other mobile apps have ever done that. TechCrunch AI reports the numbers come from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which counts 10.9 million downloads worldwide since Muse launched in September. Of those, 10.2 million came from the United States.
The last app to join this club was Meta’s own Threads, back in July 2023.
📌 The Short Version
- Rare company: 10M+ U.S. downloads in 40 days puts Muse next to Fortnite, PUBG Mobile, Pokémon GO, Threads and Disney+.
- Way ahead of AI rivals in the U.S.: ChatGPT had 3.7M U.S. downloads in its first 40 days. Grok had 500K and Claude had 200K.
- People keep coming back: Muse’s 7-day retention is 30%, against an average of 19% for its AI rivals.
- Meta is paying for this growth: Muse took 39% of Meta’s total ad spend in October.
- It’s still U.S. and Canada only, so a global rollout could push these numbers much higher.
🏆 Why This Milestone Is a Big Deal
The 10M-in-40-days list is mostly mobile games. According to Sensor Tower senior insights analyst Kara Lee, Threads and Disney+ were the only non-game apps to make it before Muse.
No AI assistant had made the list until now. ChatGPT is the app most people treat as the benchmark for consumer AI, and Muse beat its U.S. launch numbers almost three times over. Muse has also been No. 1 on the U.S. App Store every day since launch except October 19, when the streaming app Kick briefly took the top spot. It got that spot back by Tuesday. It has held No. 1 on Google Play for the past 30 days too.
One caveat. Globally, ChatGPT still wins, with around 15 million downloads in its first 40 days. That’s not an even fight, though. ChatGPT launched in many markets at once, and Japan alone made up 25% of its early installs. Muse is only available in two countries.
💰 Meta’s Distribution Machine at Work
What stands out is how Meta got here. It used the same playbook as Threads: promote the new app across a family of apps that reaches 3.6 billion daily active users.
Meta isn’t only relying on free promotion inside its own apps, though. Sensor Tower’s data shows heavy paid advertising too:
- Muse took 39% of Meta’s total ad spend in October, up from 23% in September.
- Muse is now the 21st largest brand in the U.S. by ad impressions, up from 73rd last month.
Few AI companies can match that. OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI have to win users one at a time. Meta can put its app in front of billions of people with almost no extra cost to reach them.
🔁 The Retention Numbers Matter Most
Buying downloads is easy if you’ve got the budget. Getting people to stick around is harder. That’s why the retention data may be the most important part of this story.
Sensor Tower says Muse’s U.S. retention looks like this:
- 7-day retention: 30% for Muse vs. a 19% average for rivals like ChatGPT, Claude and Grok
- 14-day retention: 23% for Muse vs. a 16% average for rivals
Daily active users also passed 2.5 million for the first time on October 16, up 15% week over week. That suggests Muse is building real habits, not just collecting curious one-time installs.
🔮 What to Watch Next
This is significant because it shows how much distribution matters in consumer AI. Muse can handle tasks on users’ behalf, and it reached No. 1 not because it’s clearly the best model. It got there because Meta can put it in front of more people than almost anyone else.
For practitioners and competitors, a few things to watch:
- International expansion. A wider launch could quickly close the global gap with ChatGPT.
- Retention past 30 days. Early retention is strong, but the real test comes after the novelty and the ad blitz fade.
- Ad spend pullback. When Meta scales back its 39% ad share, we’ll see how much of this growth happens on its own.
- Competitor responses. Expect OpenAI, Google and others to lean harder on their own distribution channels and partnerships.
The race for consumer AI is no longer only about who has the smartest model. It’s also about who already owns the most screens. Full details are available in the original TechCrunch AI report.