Altman calls Metaās Muse a good product, sees no threat
Sam Altman respects Meta's new AI agent but isn't losing sleep over it, even as Muse racks up millions of downloads in its first weeks
Meta launched its personal AI agent Muse on September 8, 2026, and within two weeks it had climbed to the top of US app store charts with somewhere between 2.5 and 3.4 million downloads. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s response to the moment: a polite nod and a shrug.
Altman publicly characterized Muse as a good product while making clear he doesn’t see it as a serious threat to OpenAI.
What Muse actually does
The app is designed to complete multi-step tasks on a user’s behalf, including booking travel, managing emails, and handling shopping. It runs inside a dedicated virtual machine, which Meta says gives it a privacy layer that keeps user data from bleeding across tasks.
The free tier offers roughly 100 million tokens per week, which is generous enough to make the product accessible to a broad audience without immediately pushing users toward a paywall. Muse is available on iOS, Android, and the web, with plans to extend its reach to AI glasses and a physical device called the Muse Charm arriving in December 2026.
Meta’s Nat Friedman confirmed that the product’s design was influenced by OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent that had been circulating in developer communities.
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A chart-topper that moved Meta’s stock
The market responded to Muse’s launch with notable enthusiasm. Meta’s stock saw double-digit percentage gains in September 2026, driven in part by the unexpected velocity of Muse’s adoption.
Hitting number one in US app stores within one to two weeks of launch is the kind of metric that tends to silence skeptics.
What Altman’s calm actually signals
Altman’s response to Muse follows a pattern that’s become common among AI company leaders: acknowledge the competition, praise the product, and project serenity.
The December expansion of Muse into AI glasses and the Muse Charm device adds another dimension to watch. Moving an AI agent from a smartphone app to always-on wearable hardware is a significant step, and one that Meta’s existing hardware investments position it to make more credibly than most.