Personal AI Agent Race Heats Up as Meta's Muse Tops App Store, Grok Bot Users Jump 24%

Meta Platforms' Muse climbed to No. 1 on the U.S. App Store free chart as of Sept. 22, two weeks after its Sept. 8 launch, intensifying competition among personal AI agents designed to handle email, scheduling and daily tasks. SpaceXAI's Grok Bot reached 418,000 weekly active users as of Sept. 14, up 24% week-over-week, since its Aug. 11 debut. Bloomberg Intelligence data shows Muse downloads at four times those of Grok Bot's standalone app. OpenAI is preparing a competing product internally called "Codex Bot," with code references to "Aeon" found in its Android app. AI engineers on X said the launch targets OpenAI's Sept. 29 DevDay in San Francisco, possibly arriving this week. Invite-only startup Instinct, which books restaurants and shops via text and phone, has over 100,000 users and is seeking funding at a $10 billion valuation. The contest increasingly hinges on whether users will surrender account credentials and payment access to AI agents.