Story
Oct 23, 2026
Muse’s 10 million-user sprint leaves Meta facing a harder test: trust
Meta’s AI agent reached 10 million users at remarkable speed and is already driving shopping activity. But privacy fears, costly infrastructure and the challenge of keeping users engaged could determine whether that early surge becomes a durable business.
Meta launched its personal AI agent, Muse, in September, initially limiting it to the US and Canada. It quickly shot to the top of the app charts, aided by Meta’s vast distribution network and a substantial ad campaign: Sensor Tower found that 10.2 million of Muse’s 10.9 million first-40-day downloads came from the US.1
By mid-October, the app had reached 2.5 million daily active users. Its early retention also outpaced rival AI apps: 30% of US users returned after seven days and 23% after 14, compared with rivals’ averages of 19% and 16%. But the same data underscores the central uncertainty: attracting users is not the same as making an AI agent indispensable.1
On Meta’s third-quarter earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said more than 10 million people had set up a Muse agent. About a quarter use it daily, while more than a quarter of shopping users make purchases averaging above $200. Meta plans to keep Muse broadly free and take a cut of transactions, betting that agent-led commerce can become a much bigger revenue stream.2
Zuckerberg’s larger vision is a network in which people’s agents transact with businesses and one another. “It’s not just navigating to that business’s website; it’s talking to their agent,” he said.2 CFO Susan Li framed the adjustment as unavoidable: “Agents are going to be an important part of how reality evolves, and everyone is just going to have to adapt.”3
That certainty runs into Meta’s weakest flank. Reports cited by critics include alleged leaks of private conversations and a case in which an agent reportedly sent a stranger to a user’s home during a Marketplace deal. A New Mexico judge also ordered Meta to pay $25 billion over data-handling and misinformation findings. Forrester’s Kate Winick called consumer trust the key variable: “The more information Muse has, the more effective it can be, and overall trust in Meta remains low.”4
There is a second constraint: compute. Zuckerberg said Muse has not yet launched globally because it is expensive to run, while Meta expects to improve cost efficiency by more than tenfold next year. The downloads are real; whether Meta can turn them into trusted, affordable daily infrastructure remains the more consequential question.3