Meta Platforms, Inc. (META.US) personal AI assistant Muse is retaining users at a level close to ChatGPT, according to data cited by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Deedy Das on X, drawing on Sensor Tower figures.
Muse's 7-day return rate exceeds 30%, essentially on par with ChatGPT, while its 14-day retention rate is 22%, slightly below ChatGPT.
Retention rate measures the proportion of users who return to an app after a specified period.
But looking at the entire retention curve, Muse's lead lasted only one week.
According to the same Sensor Tower data, Muse's first-day retention rate reached 73.3%, a full 32 percentage points above ChatGPT's 41.3%; by day 7 it remained above 30%, but ChatGPT gradually caught up and overtook Muse between days 8 and 9; by day 14, Muse fell to 22.5% while ChatGPT held at 26.8%.
Over the same period, Muse still outperformed Threads (21.2%), Google Maps (18.5%) and Grok Bot (10.4%).
The data set covers new mobile installs in September 2026 across both iOS and Android.
The 22% 14-day figure disclosed in the original text differs slightly from the 22.5% in the detailed data, and no specific figure was given for ChatGPT in the original text; both are subject to their respective source definitions.
Compared with mature social apps, the stickiness gap for AI assistants remains clear.
According to Deedy Das's post, WhatsApp has a 14-day retention rate of 67%, YouTube 59%, Instagram 54%, and both TikTok and Snapchat 37%.
In other words, even after matching ChatGPT, Muse still lags behind Meta's own mature products in usage frequency.
Between 2.8 million and 3.7 million downloads.
Sensor Tower previously estimated Muse's global downloads in its first two weeks at 2.8 million, compared with 3.7 million for ChatGPT over the same period, and 400,000 and 300,000 for Grok and Claude, respectively.
Muse launched on September 8, initially limited to the U.S. and Canada.
According to Sensor Tower, its downloads surpassed 730,000 within five days of launch and exceeded 2.5 million cumulative downloads across all platforms within 13 days (about 1.5 million on iOS and about 1.1 million on Android).
By day 22, cumulative downloads surpassed 5 million — according to industry data, only 23 apps in history have reached that pace.
Estimates from different data providers vary considerably: Apptopia estimates 4.3 million cumulative downloads (including 2.6 million on iOS), Sensor Tower gives more than 3.4 million, and Appfigures about 2.3 million.
BNP Paribas, citing third-party data, said Muse has accumulated more than 5.6 million downloads since its September launch and briefly topped the Apple App Store rankings.
These estimates are based on different sample panels, estimation models and deduplication methods, so caution is needed when making cross-comparisons.
An agent, not a chat box.
What sets Muse apart from earlier chatbots is its positioning.
Meta describes it as a personal AI agent rather than a passive assistant that only answers questions: it can browse the web, fill out online forms, place shopping orders, book restaurants, generate images, create documents, and connect to services including email, calendar, Spotify, Instagram and OpenTable, running within Meta's own secure virtual machine.
It is powered by Meta's Muse Spark model family at its core, with distribution directly tied to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The distribution advantage shows up directly in the data.
BNP Paribas analyst Nick Jones noted in a client report that Muse's early U.S. downloads exceeded those of Sora and ChatGPT, adding that "given the massive installed base of Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook, this is not surprising."
Compared with standalone AI apps that need to build a user base from scratch, Meta's existing ecosystem significantly lowers customer acquisition costs.
But the same report also presents the other side of the coin: Muse's app open rate has stabilized but remains below that of Google, ChatGPT, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook.
Jones believes this shows that "initial interest is solid, but Muse is still early in establishing habitual usage."
He maintains an "outperform" rating on Meta with an $885 price target.
The path from downloads to habits to revenue monetization is where BNP Paribas is more cautious.
Currently, Muse's base tier is free, with higher usage quotas requiring a monthly subscription — the Power plan at $20/month and the Maximum plan at $100/month, plus a promotional allowance of 100 million free tokens for new users; Meta also charges partners a small fee on some transactions completed through the agent.
Zuckerberg has previously said the company will eventually take a cut of transactions.
Jones's assessment is that long-term monetization remains a question mark for investors, but he sees a path where "advertising could become quite attractive as engagement rises" — which fits neatly with Meta's existing advertising-centric business model.
Competition is also accelerating: OpenAI launched its consumer agent product Dots this week, and whether Google, SpaceX and others follow suit is also worth watching.
Jones also believes that due to a lack of direct inventory, transaction infrastructure and customer service capabilities, Muse will not pose a substantial threat to vertical marketplace platforms in the short term.
Behind all this is Meta's rare intensity of investment.
The company's 2026 capital expenditure guidance is $130 billion to $145 billion, mainly for data centers, servers, networking equipment and specialized chips, as well as recruiting and retaining AI researchers.
Second-quarter capital expenditure was $31.1 billion, and free cash flow plummeted from $8.55 billion in the same period last year to $784 million; revenue over the same period was $60.8 billion, up 28% year-over-year (ad impressions up 14%, average price per ad up 12%), but total costs and expenses rose 55%, and net income fell 14% to $15.8 billion.
Third-quarter revenue guidance is $61 billion to $64 billion.
The market's reaction has not been one-sided.
After Muse launched, Meta's stock rose 11.3% on September 21, closing at $741.25, adding about $192 billion in market value in a single day; for the full month of September, it gained about 36%, the strongest monthly performance since July 2013.
From September 10 to October 9, Meta's stock rose from $644.38 to $718.67, up about 11.5%.
Sell-side analysts are also ramping up: JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth upgraded the rating to overweight on September 10 and raised the price target from $640 to $820; Wells Fargo raised its price target from $796 to $1,000 on October 6, also citing Muse.
As of the October 9 close, Meta traded at $718.67, down 0.31%, with a market value of about $1.83 trillion.
Trust is another retention test.
For an agent that needs access to user accounts to function, privacy and trust are themselves retention variables.
As Muse launched, Meta had just agreed to settle a social media-related lawsuit for up to $18 billion; reportedly, Amazon has proactively blocked Muse from accessing its online store, citing security concerns, unauthorized credential storage and data scraping; Meta also faced backlash over an Instagram feature linked to Muse Image that allowed the generation of images involving public accounts, and subsequently shut down that feature.
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