Apptopia estimates Muse had 642,000 U.S. mobile daily users at the comparable launch point, versus 231,000 for ChatGPT. Meta has already attached $20 and $100 monthly tiers to heavier usage; retention, paid conversion and cost per completed task will determine whether Muse itself earns an attractive return.
Meta's Muse now has a stronger adoption signal than its download rank. Apptopia estimates reported by TechCrunch put the agent at 642,000 U.S. mobile daily active users at the comparable point after launch, versus 231,000 for ChatGPT. On iOS alone, Muse had about 359,000 U.S. daily active users. The same dataset puts Muse at 2.8 million total mobile installs in its first 12 days and 1.8 million iOS downloads in the U.S. and Canada, compared with about 1.3 million for ChatGPT over its comparable first 12 days.
Those are third-party estimates rather than Meta's internal figures. They move the evidence beyond acquisition: Muse is being opened often enough to produce a daily-use signal, which is more relevant to monetization and compute demand than another App Store milestone.
Meta expects 2026 capital expenditure of $130 billion to $145 billion. Second-quarter capex, including principal payments on finance leases, reached $31.08 billion, while free cash flow was $784 million and revenue was $60.8 billion. That infrastructure supports advertising, recommendation systems, core computing and other AI products. Muse gives investors one identifiable consumer route through which the enlarged compute base can generate incremental revenue.
Meta has already put a price on heavier usage
Muse launched with a free tier and two paid plans: Power at $20 a month and Maximum at $100. Meta has said it expects most users to remain on the free tier. The commercial question is therefore measurable. The paid tiers need enough conversion and repeat task volume to offset the incremental cost of long-running agent work, while free users need to contribute commerce or other monetizable engagement.
Muse also benefits from Meta's existing distribution. The agent works through its own app and WhatsApp, and more than 95% of Muse users in Apptopia's estimate also use Facebook while 63% use Instagram. Meta can cross-promote the agent inside products with established daily habits, lowering the customer-acquisition burden.
Amazon's decision to block Muse from completing purchases shows where that advantage ends. Retailers, airlines, banks and other services control many of the systems an agent must touch. Their technical and commercial rules can lower successful-task rates even when consumer adoption is strong.
The 642,000 U.S. mobile DAU estimate reduces uncertainty about Meta's ability to seed mass-market agent usage. The return on Meta's full capex program depends on many products beyond Muse. For Muse itself, the decisive measurements are 30- and 90-day cohort retention, conversion into the $20 and $100 tiers, task frequency, successful-task rate and compute cost per completed task. Those figures can establish whether the agent earns a direct return on the incremental infrastructure it consumes.
Sources
https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/21/metas-muse-is-outpacing-chatgpts-early-mobile-launch/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/08/meta-debuts-its-muse-ai-agent-will-consumers-trust-it/ https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/21/metas-ai-agent-has-been-blocked-from-using-amazon-com/ https://investor.atmeta.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2026/Meta-Reports-Second-Quarter-2026-Results/