Meta Finally Joined the AI Race, Taking on ChatGPT and Grok
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For AI, 2025 has been anything but dull. So far we've seen Grok, DeepSeek, countless updates from OpenAI, and now, a new competitor: Meta. And I've been waiting for this to happen for quite a while!
I'm not sure what took Zuck so long to get into the race... Meta open sourced Llama, its large language model (aka ChatGPT) back in 2023, but didn't turn it into a consumer app.
Well, last week they fixed this mistake and launched Meta AI.
They did it in a way that's kind of clever. Let's see how and how well it worked out for them.
Last week, Meta launched Meta AI, its answer to ChatGPT, Grok, Claude, and the other consumer AI apps. But while Meta AI is new, the app itself isn't...
See, Meta didn't create a new app but rather respurpose an existing app it already owned and operated. That app was Meta View, the app you need to set up the Ray-Ban Meta glasses.
Weird right? Well, not really when you think about ASO.
Organic success on the App Store is all momentum. Releasing a new app means building momentum from scratch and for App Store Optimization, it means the app won't see a lot of visibility until it gets ratings.
By rebranding an existing app, with existing users, and momentum, and ratings, Meta shortcuts the process and gets to discovery more quickly. This happens a lot more than most think on the App Store.
Now let's talk numbers!
According to Appfigures Intelligence, Meta View had accumulated 2.5M downloads before being renamed. That's a good amount of momentum and a good chunk of users who could likely start using the service right away.
As Meta AI, the app saw 788K downloads in its first five days in the App Store and Google Play, according to our estimates.
I compared downloads in the first five days after launch of all popular competitors to see just how much excitement is left in the market for AI, and the results were pretty positive for Meta. It ranked in the middle of the top five, where ChatGPT led with 2.3M downloads and Claude came in last with 235K downloads.
The US was the major source of downloads across both stores, but downloads came from almost every country we track.
Meta AI gained more popularity on the App Store, which added about twice as many downloads as Google Play in its first few days. Though, I suspect this will change with time.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
