Meta’s AI companion app Muse has crossed 10 million U.S. downloads within its first 40 days, a pace that market intelligence firm Sensor Tower says only 11 other mobile apps have matched.
TechCrunch, citing new Sensor Tower data, reported that Muse reached 10.9 million downloads overall since its September debut, with 10.2 million of those installs in the United States. That matters because Muse is not yet a global product on the same terms as some rivals; the app is available only in the U.S. and Canada, which makes the U.S. concentration less surprising but the scale harder to dismiss.
The figures are estimates rather than company-filed numbers, and downloads are a noisy measure of success. An install can mean curiosity, heavy promotion, or both. It does not, by itself, mean a tool has become useful enough to stay in someone’s life. That is the more interesting contest for an AI assistant that promises to handle tasks on a user’s behalf.
On that point, Sensor Tower’s data suggest Muse is doing better than a simple launch spike. In the U.S., the app reportedly kept 30% of users after seven days and 23% after 14 days. TechCrunch said those rates were above the averages Sensor Tower recorded for ChatGPT, Claude and Grok over the same intervals, at 19% and 16%.
Meta’s own machinery is part of the story. Sensor Tower told TechCrunch that the company sharply increased its advertising push for Muse in October, allocating 39% of its total ad spend to the app, up from 23% in September. The app also benefits from being promoted across Meta’s wider family of services, a distribution advantage smaller AI companies do not have.
There is a difference, though, between building reach and building dependence. Sensor Tower said Muse hit 2.5 million daily active users on October 16, and TechCrunch reported that it reclaimed the No. 1 spot on the U.S. App Store after briefly losing it on October 19. Those are signs of momentum. They are not yet proof of permanence.
What can be said cleanly is narrower and still significant: Meta has shown that an AI assistant can be pushed into the mainstream mobile market at unusual speed, and that some of the people who downloaded it did not immediately leave.
Gabriel Fenech 
Dua Mifsud 
Ryan C