Meta’s Muse agent tops App Store with 3.4 million downloads

Key Points

1. Meta's AI agent Muse hit No. 1 on Apple's U.S. App Store this week.
2. Zuckerberg promised live voice access, smartglasses integration and a handheld device called Muse Charm.
3. Meta stock rose over 10% on the week; Amazon has blocked the agent.

The latest:

Meta’s new AI agent Muse has been downloaded more than 3.4 million times since launching earlier this month and spent the past week at No. 1 on Apple’s U.S. App Store, the Wall Street Journal reported. Meta shares rose more than 10% over the week on the agent’s prospects. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg used the company’s annual developer conference on Wednesday to widen the product’s roadmap.

Details:

• The product: Muse is an AI agent with its own standalone app, launched by Meta earlier this month, according to the Wall Street Journal. Meta has also given it a mascot, Jolly, which appeared at Meta Connect in Menlo Park, California.
• The roadmap: Zuckerberg said at the developer conference that users will soon be able to talk to their agents live and reach them through Meta smartglasses and a coming hand-held device called Muse Charm. He described a future in which the agent becomes increasingly intertwined in users’ daily lives. Meta did not attach release dates.
• The market reaction: Meta’s stock climbed more than 10% over the past week on the prospect of the agent’s expansion, per the Journal, which cautioned that Zuckerberg’s vision has not yet been delivered and that the share move reflects expectations rather than the shipped product’s performance.
• The trust problem: Muse’s core obstacle is persuading users to hand over access to email, bank and other online accounts, the Journal reported. Only 8% of people say they are comfortable doing so, according to a recent Oppenheimer & Co. survey — a ceiling that limits how much of the promised functionality can be used.
• The retail split: Meta must also strike arrangements with websites so its agents can complete purchases on a user’s behalf. Amazon decided to block Muse, according to the Journal. Walmart, Sephora and Best Buy cut deals with Meta instead, leaving the largest U.S. online retailer outside the agent’s shopping reach.
• The competition: Rival agents are the third open question, with no public timeline for when competitors ship their own. OpenAI holds its developer day on Tuesday, which the Journal’s Meta reporter flagged as the launch event she is watching most closely for a response to Muse.
• The research finding: In a separate Journal column, Julie Jargon reported that AI use among more than 2,300 middle-school students is rising rapidly, and that researchers found any AI use associated with higher social anxiety and depressive symptoms. The more often students used AI, the more anxious and lonely they became.
• The bear case: Columnist Jonathan Weil wrote that a steady chorus of bears has warned since the boom began that it will end like the dot-com bubble or the mid-2000s housing bubble. Nearly four years after ChatGPT’s launch, he noted, the boom is still running.

Between the lines:

The 8% comfort figure and the Amazon block sit awkwardly beside a 10% stock move: investors are pricing a fully wired agent, while the two things that would make it useful — account access and checkout reach at the biggest retailer — remain unresolved. The hardware announcements carry no dates, which keeps that timeline open.

What’s next

OpenAI’s developer day on Tuesday is the nearest test of whether a rival agent lands. Watch also for release dates on Muse Charm and smartglasses access, and for any shift in Amazon’s decision to block Muse.