The news: ChatGPT isn’t just leading the chatbot race—it’s dominating it. With rapid growth and billions of daily prompts, it remains the go-to generative AI (genAI) tool for both businesses and consumers despite rising competition.

The stats: Figures on the AI leader’s user growth are debated, but the most consistent recent number for weekly active users (WAUs) is 500 million—an increase from 100 million WAUs in November 2023, a year after its debut. That number tripled to 300 million by December 2024.

While 500 million is a fair calculation, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated in April that as many as 10% of people worldwide—or about 800 million—use the platform. But that number doesn’t encompass all of ChatGPT’s stats: In June, the chatbot had about 4.6 billion global website visits and 52.2 million unique US visitors, per Semrush and Comscore, respectively.

Killer engagement: Use of ChatGPT has remained high around the world even as other genAI options have entered the market.

• ChatGPT handles about 2.5 billion user prompts per day, according to OpenAI. That healthy engagement rate could suggest a mix of highly active users and those who use the platform only occasionally.
• Only 330 million of those prompts come from users in the US, indicating that adoption isn’t limited to any one region. ChatGPT is banned or unavailable in China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

Path to profits: Despite the impressive numbers, being the king of chatbots is an expensive position to maintain. In January, Altman said that the company was losing money on Pro subscriptions, indicating that users’ high engagement surpasses what the $200 per person per month subscription fee can cover.

As the company’s partnership with Microsoft grows rocky, and as some high-value employees leave for Meta, that revenue disconnect could loom larger.

This could open the door for more competition, as the player that can successfully monetize their product—and balance the costs of model training and inference—might surpass ChatGPT.

Widespread focus: OpenAI’s plan to charge growth with a wide catalog of offerings—Operator, video generators, and an upcoming browser and office productivity tools, to name a few—could spread the company’s resources thin.

Every new feature adds value but also weight. Focusing OpenAI’s infrastructure on too many applications could lead to support problems or outages.

Efforts to compete for dominance and talent with Big Tech players like Microsoft, Google, and Meta might cause leadership to lose focus on basic ChatGPT operations.

Our take: As genAI evolves from a novelty product to a routine tool in workflows and daily life, ChatGPT is maintaining its role as an industry leader. To stay ahead, OpenAI should focus on improving ChatGPT as a core product and prove it can scale profits sustainably before racing to outbuild its rivals.