Milestone! ChatGPT Makes It to 400 Million Weekly Active Users, Doubling in Six Months
OpenAI's ChatGPT has reportedly doubled its weekly active users, showcasing rapid growth despite the competition from rivals.
Recently, the "ChatGPT 2024 User Growth Report" released by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), indicated that OpenAI's flagship product, ChatGPT, demonstrated remarkable user growth in the second half of 2024. The report claims that the AI model has doubled its weekly active users in just six months.
Historic Progress
In November 2022, ChatGPT was still only a "research preview," becoming the fastest application to reach 100 million monthly active users in history. It achieved this milestone in just two months. This speed left other applications far behind, prompting widespread admiration.
By the next year in November 2023, ChatGPT reached another milestone: 100 million weekly active users, a more astonishing achievement. Just a year later, in December 2024, this number soared to 300 million, reaching 400 million by February 2025. The report also noted that it took ChatGPT 9 months (from November 2023 to August 2024) to grow from 100 million to 200 million weekly active users. Interestingly, it took less than six months to grow from 200 million to 400 million. This growth rate is simply phenomenal!
Inviting Features that Sparked Curiosity
More analysis from the a16z report showed that consumers' initial interest in ChatGPT stemmed largely from novelty. People were curious to try this amazing AI. However, what sustained ChatGPT's user growth was its continuously iterated features and models.
To be specific, the release of GPT-4o, with its new multimodal capabilities, directly triggered a surge in user engagement from April to May 2024. Releasing the advanced voice mode further boosted user growth from July to August 2024, followed by the introduction of the o1 model series, which added another layer of growth from September to October 2024. This series of upgrades delivered impressive results!
Boosted Mobile Users
There's much to praise about ChatGPT’s mobile performance, which has been consistently strong. Through the years, the ChatGPT mobile application has seen monthly user growth of 5% to 15%. Currently, 175 million of ChatGPT's 400 million weekly active users access the application via mobile devices, accessing the tool from anywhere.
DeepSeek's Rise, but ChatGPT Remains Strong
Competitors have posed various threats to ChatGPT, but it has remained strong. The entrance of DeepSeek into the AI industry saw it rapidly climb to the global number two spot within 10 days, securing second place in the mobile market in February, even capturing 15% of ChatGPT's mobile users. Although DeepSeek exhibits slightly higher user stickiness on mobile than Perplexity and Claude, it still lags behind ChatGPT in this aspect.
However, according to Similarweb, a market intelligence provider, ChatGPT still holds the top position for monthly unique website visits and monthly active mobile users. In the face of strong competition, ChatGPT still leads the way.
