Meta's Muse hits 10.2M US downloads in 40 days, becoming the 12th app ever to reach the milestone
TechCrunch reported Oct 20 that Meta's AI companion Muse reached 10.2 million US downloads in its first 40 days and 10.9 million globally, making it the 12th app ever to hit that milestone. Muse has 2.5 million daily active users, with 30% day-7 and 23% day-14 retention versus competitor averages of 19% and 16%.
TechCrunch reported on Oct 20 that Meta's AI companion Muse reached 10.2 million US downloads in its first 40 days after launch, clearing the benchmark of 10 million US downloads within 40 days, with 10.9 million globally. Counting Muse, only 12 apps have ever reached that milestone, with just 11 before it, and most of those were large mobile games such as Fortnite, PUBG Mobile and Pokémon GO. Among non-game apps, the most recent was Threads in July 2023, and another was Disney+.
Comparing the same first-40-days window in the US market, ChatGPT reached 3.7 million downloads, Grok 500,000 and Claude 200,000. That puts Muse at roughly 2.8 times ChatGPT, 20.4 times Grok and 51 times Claude. Globally, the article says ChatGPT had about 15 million downloads in its first 40 days versus Muse's 10.9 million, but argues the comparison is imperfect because Muse was only available in the US and Canada at the time while ChatGPT also covered Japan, Brazil, Germany and other markets, with Japan alone contributing 25% of ChatGPT's global first-40-days installs.
On retention, Muse posts 30% day-7 and 23% day-14 retention, above competitor averages of 19% and 16%, or 11 and 7 percentage points higher. On scale, the report notes Muse reached 2.5 million daily active users, a milestone recorded on Oct 16 and up 15% week over week. The figures given are daily active users; the article does not separately disclose paid subscriber counts, nor does it provide monthly active users, churn or conversion data.
On rankings and growth drivers, Muse quickly reached number one on the US App Store overall chart and held it except for a brief period on Oct 19 when the streaming app Kick passed it, and it has ranked first on Google Play for the past 30 days. The article attributes growth mainly to two factors: cross-promotion from Meta's apps and services, which have around 3.6 billion daily active users, and sharply increased advertising, with Meta devoting 39% of total ad spend to promoting Muse in October versus 23% in September, lifting Muse from 73rd to 21st in US ad exposure brand rankings.