Meta's Muse AI Agent Tops 2.5 Million Downloads in 13 Days as Stock Jumps and Options Volume Spikes

Meta’s new personal AI agent, Muse, has topped 2.5 million downloads in its first 13 days on the market, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower cited by CNBC. The launch has coincided with a sharp rally in Meta stock and unusually heavy options trading, even as Amazon has moved to block the agent from its shopping site and Shopify has struck a partnership to let Muse check out on its platform.

Download Numbers: What Sensor Tower Reported

Muse debuted on Sept. 8 and, according to Sensor Tower data reported by CNBC, racked up 730,000 downloads in roughly its first five days. Sensor Tower said the app overtook ChatGPT as the leading free iOS app in the U.S. on Friday. As of Monday, the firm estimated cumulative downloads had surpassed 2.5 million, with roughly 1.5 million on the iOS App Store and 1.1 million on Google Play. Those platform-level figures do not include usage via the web or WhatsApp, where Muse is also available, per TechCrunch.

It is worth noting these are third-party estimates from Sensor Tower, not figures disclosed by Meta itself. Sensor Tower also cautioned that comparisons across apps are complicated because competing agents had staggered releases split between the Apple and Google Play stores, which affects their totals.

Over that same 13-day post-launch window, Sensor Tower said Muse’s cumulative downloads exceeded those of Anthropic’s Claude (400,000) and xAI’s Grok (200,000), but trailed OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which logged 3.1 million downloads in its comparable period, according to CNBC.

Stock Reaction and Options Activity

Meta shares surged sharply on Monday. CNBC’s report on the download data described the stock as up “more than 11%” that day, while a separate CNBC report on investor positioning put Monday’s gain at 12% and said the rally has extended to roughly 21% since the company first unveiled Muse, leaving shares within 7% of their August 2025 all-time high.

Options trading was equally notable. Volume in Meta options ran at about 4.5 times the 30-day average on Monday, with nearly $3.9 billion in total premium changing hands, according to Cboe LiveVol and SpotGamma data cited by CNBC. More than twice as many calls as puts were likely bought, and seven of the ten largest trades were bullish or neutral in structure. The heaviest activity clustered in zero-day-to-expiry calls with strikes between 720 and 745 that were already in the money, with additional heavy volume in 775- and 800-strike calls expiring in mid-October.

Not all the positioning was bullish. CNBC reported that the session's biggest dollar-size trader took what appeared to be a roughly $20 million net short position across a handful of spread trades, centered on the sale of a one-by-two 710/765-strike call spread expiring Oct. 16 that would make money if Meta shares slip below $740.

“The inflows in options are huge,” Brent Kochuba, founder of SpotGamma, told CNBC. “It seems like AI hype around their Muse.”

Amazon Blocks Muse, Shopify Opens the Door

Not every retailer has welcomed the agent. Amazon has blocked Muse from accessing its shopping site, citing privacy and security concerns, according to CNBC, which noted the move was first reported by GeekWire. Amazon said it received no advance notice that Muse would attempt to access its store, and raised several specific objections: that the agent bypasses the personalization and other features built into Amazon’s shopping experience, and that Muse appears to capture and store customer credentials and scrape account data.

An Amazon spokesperson said: “We think it’s fairly straightforward that third-party applications that offer to make purchases on behalf of customers from other businesses should operate openly and respect service provider decisions about whether or not to participate.”

Shopify took the opposite approach. CEO Tobias Lütke announced Monday that Shopify is partnering with Muse to allow agentic checkout in its online stores, according to CNBC. No financial terms of the arrangement were reported.

Monetization and Wall Street’s Read

Muse is free to use with usage limits, but Meta is also selling monthly subscriptions priced at $20 or $100 depending on usage, CNBC reported, describing it as a potential revenue stream separate from Meta’s core advertising business. At launch, CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized security design, saying Meta built “a Secure Credential Store for your passwords and credit cards so Muse can’t read this information,” and that the app checks with users before taking sensitive actions like payments, according to Yahoo Finance.

Several Wall Street firms framed Muse as a response to investor skepticism about Meta’s AI spending. Mizuho Securities kept an Outperform rating and $750 price target, and analyst Lloyd Walmsley called Muse a “significant step” in proving the return on investment of AI, which he described as the biggest hurdle for long-term investors, according to Morningstar. KeyBanc Capital Markets held an Overweight rating with a $780 target, per Yahoo Finance, while Wells Fargo raised its target to $796, according to multiple reports cited by CNBC. Mizuho analysts wrote in a client note, “We believe Meta’s Muse consumer AI agent marks the beginning of a substantial product cycle for Meta that is not priced into shares.”

These figures are analyst price targets and opinions, not guarantees of future performance, and are attributed to the specific firms that issued them.

Capex, Skepticism and What Isn’t Known

Meta has not disclosed daily or weekly active users, retention data, or an incremental capex figure tied specifically to Muse. The company’s broader 2026 capital expenditure guidance stands at $130 billion to $145 billion, most of it earmarked for AI, after Meta raised the low end of that range from $125 billion at its second-quarter earnings, according to Morningstar and other reports. Meta also announced Monday it plans to build a transatlantic subsea data cable called Petal, per CNBC, though the company did not tie that project’s cost specifically to Muse.

Some analysts remain cautious about durability and privacy. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon told CNBC that agentic AI products are only now reaching mainstream users: “I think up to this point most of the agentic use cases have not really been for normal people.” On the data implications of an agent that can read email, book travel and shop, Rasgon added, “They care about security, I don’t know how much they care about privacy.”

CNBC also noted that early download surges are not always a reliable predictor of staying power, pointing to OpenAI’s Sora and Meta’s own Vibes AI video tool, which the outlet said produced similar early spikes but did not sustain them as blockbusters.

Bottom Line

The reported numbers are clear on their face: Sensor Tower’s estimates show Muse posting strong early download momentum, and Meta stock and options markets reacted with unusually large moves on Monday. What remains unverified, based on available disclosures, is whether that download surge translates into lasting usage, and how much Muse will cost Meta to run or monetize beyond its stated $20 and $100 subscription tiers. Investors weighing the rally will be watching for any future disclosure of active-user or retention data, and for whether Amazon’s pushback proves an isolated dispute or a broader constraint on where agentic shopping tools can operate.