Just two weeks after launch, Meta (META.O)’s personal AI agent Muse has already climbed to the No. 1 spot on the U.S. Apple App Store. According to data from Sensor Tower, since it was released on September 8, Muse has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times. Meta internal data cited by The Information shows that about a week after launch, it had already been used by more than 500,000 people in practice, with daily active users exceeding 250,000 and more than 2 million total prompts submitted.
The reaction from the capital markets has been equally intense. After Muse received a large volume of positive reviews, Meta’s stock price surged 11% in a single day on Monday, marking its biggest one-day gain since April 2025; since September, the cumulative increase has approached 30%. An AI application launched less than half a month ago has already driven user growth, valuation expectations, and competitive narrative across multiple industries at the same time.
The question is whether this is just a short-lived burst of hype—or Meta’s real “ChatGPT moment.”
From chatbots to “doing things for you”
Muse’s key differentiator isn’t only its model capability—it is moving AI from answering questions to executing tasks.
Users can ask Muse to look up and book travel, find deals, make calls, send emails, fill out web forms, organize their inboxes, and handle scheduling conflicts. It can also connect to services such as Gmail, Apple and Google Calendar, and OpenTable, and combine information from Meta’s ecosystem like Facebook Marketplace and Instagram to complete personalized tasks.
That is also why Muse could have “ChatGPT moment” significance. ChatGPT first, at the end of 2022, made many everyday users directly feel the value of generative AI. Muse is trying to take the next step—turning AI agents, previously used mainly by developers and tech enthusiasts, into part of ordinary consumers’ daily lives.
Early data supports this possibility. In comparable post-release periods, Muse’s cumulative U.S. downloads at one point surpassed those of ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok. JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth believes Muse has the potential to become one of the most widely used consumer AI applications after ChatGPT.
Meta also has advantages that are difficult for independent AI startups to replicate. With Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp reaching billions of users, Muse has entered WhatsApp as well as offering a standalone app. The deeper AI agents get into emails, calendars, contacts, social relationships, and consumer data, the higher their personalized value—while Meta already has vast user relationship and content data.
Muse begins to affect industries beyond AI
The market has started to trade expectations that AI agents could change the consumer entry point.
After Muse’s partnerships with companies such as PayPal and Plaid, on Tuesday of this week the S&P 500 Financials sector fell by 2%. Charles Schwab and LPL Financial both dropped more than 6%. Large banks including JPMorgan and Bank of America also fell noticeably.
Investors worry that if AI agents can help users move money around the clock, manage idle cash, execute tax strategies, and compare financial products, some financial businesses that rely on customer inertia, idle funds, and fees for manual services may be hit.
But whether this capability can truly take hold still depends on third-party platforms. Amazon has already blocked Muse from shopping on its website, saying Meta has not been authorized. Shopify, meanwhile, has chosen to work with Meta, allowing Muse to complete purchases on the user’s behalf.
This exposes a core contradiction in the commercialization of AI agents: just because they can access websites technically doesn’t mean platforms are willing to open themselves up. If AI agents reduce how often consumers directly browse products and click ads, large platforms with huge advertising businesses may not want to hand over the consumer entry point to third-party agents.
The biggest risk is still trust and competition
The more useful Muse becomes, the more permissions users need to hand over. An Oppenheimer survey shows only 8% of U.S. consumers are willing to give their passwords to Meta, while 30% say they would be willing to trust Google.
Reuters also reported that Meta is testing Muse’s “artificial concierge” feature, in which human contractors handle some of the calls initiated by AI agents. Some Meta employees worry that users might disclose sensitive information to call center staff without realizing it. Meta said the feature is still being tested and will only be rolled out after appropriate safety, privacy-protection, and disclosure mechanisms are put in place.
The competitive window also won’t last very long. Wall Street analysts expect OpenAI and Google to roll out similar consumer AI agents. Inside OpenAI, there has already been discussion about developing personal AI assistants that compete with Muse. Once task execution, browser operation, and the ability to connect personal data can be quickly replicated, Muse’s current first-mover advantage could shrink rapidly.
Commercialization has also yet to be validated. Muse currently offers a free version, along with paid plans of $20 and $100 per month. Bank of America analyst Justin Post believes that ad revenue, subscriptions, and transaction commissions may still be hard to generate significant income before 2028. Truist, a large U.S. financial group, expects that by 2030 Muse could add $28.5 billion in revenue to Meta.
Muse has proven that ordinary consumers may be willing to use AI agents that can actually take action, not just chat with AI. But the real “ChatGPT moment” can’t be determined by download rankings alone. Meta also needs to prove that users will continue handing over high-frequency tasks like email, calendars, shopping, and financial activities to Muse—and that they will keep granting enough permissions over the long term.
Two weeks are enough to show that Muse isn’t just a one-off AI experiment that goes unnoticed. Whether it can become the entry point for Meta to its next computing platform depends on whether usage habits stick after the initial novelty fades.