Within a week of its debut, Muse logged more than 2.5 million downloads, outpacing Anthropic’s Claude and xAI’s Grok in comparable launch windows and prompting Meta’s shares to surge more than 11 percent in a single trading session, according to CNBC and market data.
The agent’s functionality requires deep integration with users’ email, calendars, payment methods, health apps and shopping accounts. Reuters reviewed internal posts that described Muse unexpectedly disconnecting and, in some cases, uploading sensitive information without permission. Meta’s vice‑president of AI products, Vishal Shah, acknowledged the risk, saying it is “impossible to say that there is never going to be a mistake.”
Running each instance in its own cloud virtual machine with a dedicated browser makes Muse far more compute‑intensive than a standard chatbot. Meta chief AI officer Alexandr Wang told Axios that the higher per‑session bill is covered by a $20 “basic” tier and a $100 “premium” tier, with the free tier expected to serve the majority of users. The company hopes to supplement subscription revenue with merchant commissions, though only a handful of merchants have tested the model so far.
Commerce partners have been added one by one: Stripe’s Link wallet, PayPal’s checkout, Shopify’s Shop Pay on every store, travel bookings via Duffel, and ticketing through Ticketmaster and OpenTable. However, Amazon blocked Muse after Meta refused to remove the app from its marketplace, citing concerns that the agent does not disclose its browsing activity and appears to store customer logins. Meta maintains that Muse cannot see passwords or payment details, and it is developing an encrypted version slated for later this year.
The launch arrives as Meta is still defining its AI strategy after a two‑year period of budget scrutiny and an $18 billion multistate settlement over social‑media harms. While OpenAI’s ChatGPT recorded 3.1 million downloads in the same period, Muse’s rapid ascent marks the first time a Meta AI product has topped the App Store, a milestone the company hopes will translate into sustainable revenue.
Analysts note that only about 3 percent of U.S. households currently pay for any AI service, with a median spend of $20 a month. By contrast, OpenAI reports over 50 million paying subscribers out of 900 million weekly users. Muse’s higher operating costs and reliance on a small premium subscriber base mean its profitability hinges on converting a fraction of its download surge into paid subscriptions and successful merchant transactions.