Within 12 days of its launch, Muse has racked up 2.8 million downloads, outpacing ChatGPT's performance during the same period and setting a U.S. record with 264,000 downloads in a single day—sending Meta's market capitalization soaring by $234 billion.
Behind this lies the open letter by Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, which discusses "human aspirations," as well as Zuckerberg's $14.3 billion acquisition that was once mocked as "crazy": in hindsight, this may well be the most cost-effective talent buy in Silicon Valley's history.
$Meta Platforms (META.US)$Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang recently published an open letter outlining the core philosophy behind his leadership in building the Muse AI assistant: empowering every ordinary person to realize their dreams. Alongside Muse's strong market performance, the letter has come into the public eye, further reinforcing external perceptions of the strategic value of this $14 billion acquisition.
$Meta Platforms (META.US)$Since its launch, the app has gained tremendous momentum. According to Sensor Tower, within the first 12 days of its release on the U.S. and Canadian App Stores, it amassed 2.8 million downloads—surpassing ChatGPT's 1.3 million during the same period—and set a U.S. single-day download record of 264,000 on September 19. Buoyed by this performance, Meta's market capitalization has risen by roughly $234 billion over the past five trading sessions.
In his open letter, Wang wrote that most people never articulate what they truly want—not because they lack aspirations, but because dreams often quietly fade under the weight of mundane, practical obstacles. He positions Muse as everyone's "second brain"—a versatile personal assistant capable of understanding half‑spoken thoughts, helping users craft plans, send emails, secure funding, and overcome hurdles.
An Open Letter on "Longing"
In his letter, Wang describes the predicament of human aspiration with almost literary flair: "Every unfulfilled longing is a silent tragedy of human potential." He writes that for too long, the world has been shaped by a handful of "fervent visionaries who, in one way or another, have turned their aspirations into reality," while Muse's mission is to enable each and every one of the eight billion people to truly unlock their own agency.
In his vision, Muse is not a wish‑granting genie but a pragmatic executor—"Here's what you've been dreaming of your whole life; let's make it happen, and here's how"—and then he gets down to business.
The letter was released shortly after the conclusion of Meta Connect 2026. At that event, Meta unveiled the Muse Charm—an independent pocket device designed for voice interaction—alongside its Meta VR headset, which weighs just 100 grams and retails for $1,299, as well as the third-generation Ray‑Ban Meta Gen 3 smart glasses, starting at $249, among a range of other hardware products.
From Scale AI to Meta: The Returns of a Controversial Acquisition
Wang joins$Meta Platforms (META.US)$The manner itself was quite dramatic. In 2025, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg acquired the entire workforce of the popular AI startup Scale AI for $14.3 billion, and Wang, as the founder of Scale AI, reportedly received approximately $5 billion personally. At the time, this deal was viewed by some market observers as an exorbitant price.
Wang is the co-founder of Scale AI, a company that specializes in data annotation services for training AI models and was once one of the highest-valued AI infrastructure firms in Silicon Valley. Following Meta's acquisition of Scale AI in 2025, Wang assumed the role of Meta's Chief AI Officer, leading the company's AI product strategy.
Tech investor Adam Khoo wrote on X:
"At the time, people thought Zuckerberg was crazy for spending $5 billion to hire Alexandr Wang. Today, Meta's new AI products developed under Wang's leadership have added roughly $200 billion to the company's market value. Suddenly, investing heavily to secure top talent doesn't seem so crazy after all."
This acquisition also carries profound strategic implications. The deal has effectively reversed the perception that Meta lagged behind in the AI space, transforming it from a "follower" into a "leader."
The Camouflage T-Shirt and the $30 Style Philosophy
If Muse represents Wang's artistic expression at the product level, then his outfit on the Meta Connect 2026 stage unexpectedly emerged as another form of personal branding.
That day, Wang took to the stage in a 1990s‑style camouflage T-shirt emblazoned with a deer head, paired with camouflage Crocs and black trousers. Following the event, the outfit quickly sparked heated debate on X, with some users speculating that the T-shirt was an Hermès piece worth $800.
Wang promptly stepped forward to "clarify," stating that the shirt came from a secondhand store in Santa Cruz and cost him $30, the Crocs were about $60, and the Calvin Klein underwear was $5. He dismissed the public speculation about luxury items as "defamation."
According to Business Insider, this isn't the first time Wang has appeared in a similar deer‑camouflage‑inspired look—he's sported similar attire in previous Core Memory interviews and at key internal meetings. This "anti‑elitist" style of dress aligns closely with his online persona, which he cultivates on X by dubbing himself a "tweet cannon" and relentlessly flooding the platform with memes to promote Muse. Some observers even see it as a deliberate brand strategy: stripping away the sheen of corporate elitism while preserving the chaotic energy of a founder.
Edited by melody