OpenAI’s flagship product, ChatGPT, is reportedly approaching 1 billion weekly active users.
This is what The Information reported on Wednesday (July 29), citing company data, noting that the milestone comes seven months later than the artificial intelligence (AI) startup had originally predicted.
Despite this, the report states that ChatGPT remains one of the fastest growing apps in the history of the internet, reaching this size in less than four years.
The information added that growth slowed last fall due to user backlash against the GPT-5 model and increased competition, making the path to 1 billion users a difficult one. Among ChatGPT’s main competitors is Google’s Gemini AI, which has 950 million monthly active users and has the advantage of integration with its parent company’s search engine.
OpenAI also faces a challenge from Anthropic, which recently surpassed OpenAI in terms of revenue thanks to its popularity among enterprise customers. As a result, OpenAI has pivoted aggressively toward business customers, The Information report said.
Sarah Friar, the company’s chief financial officer, recently said that these customers account for 40% of OpenAI’s revenue, and that number is expected to reach 50% by the end of the year. Meanwhile, OpenAI projects $25 billion in revenue this year, following last year’s $10 billion in revenue, while also predicting a $25 billion cash burn, the report added.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned employees that this year will be “rough” given Google’s momentum, but the company still has more than 50 million paid members and holds a significant lead in paid consumer adoption, The Information reported.
ChatGPT reached 1 billion monthly active app users worldwide in May. This is the fastest application ever to reach that scale.
“Google Maps, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube each took five to eight years to reach the same standards. ChatGPT did it in three years,” PYMNTS wrote in June.
This growth is consistent with PYMNTS Intelligence monitoring of consumer behavior, which found that more than 60% of consumers are starting to plan, learn, and shop every day within an AI platform. That means “rather than layering AI on top of existing habits, it completely replaces those habits,” the report said.
Product discovery is “the clearest sign of that change,” the report continued, with additional research showing that in February, 31.4% of AI users turned to generative AI to find product links.
PYMNTS Intelligence research also shows that ChatGPT is more popular overall compared to its rivals, with 83% of AI users having tried the platform at least once.
