According to a recent "ChatGPT 2024 User Growth Report" released by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), OpenAI's flagship product, ChatGPT, demonstrated remarkable user growth in the second half of 2024.
Weekly Active Users Doubled in Just Six Months
Back in November 2022, when ChatGPT was still a "research preview," it became the fastest application to reach 100 million monthly active users in history, achieving this milestone in just two months. This speed left other applications far behind, prompting widespread admiration.
By November 2023, ChatGPT reached another milestone: 100 million weekly active users. The subsequent growth was even more astonishing! Just one year later, in December 2024, this number soared to 300 million, reaching 400 million by February 2025. The report notes that it took ChatGPT 9 months (from November 2023 to August 2024) to grow from 100 million to 200 million weekly active users. Even more surprisingly, it took less than six months to grow from 200 million to 400 million. This growth rate is simply phenomenal!
Beyond the Novelty: A Powerful Combination of Features
The a16z report analyzes 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.
In particular, the release of GPT-4o, with its new multimodal capabilities, directly triggered a surge in user engagement from April to May 2024. Following closely, the launch of the advanced voice mode further boosted user growth from July to August 2024. The introduction of the o1 model series added another layer of growth from September to October 2024. This series of upgrades delivered impressive results!
Strong Mobile Performance
It's worth noting that ChatGPT's mobile performance has been consistently strong. Over the past year, 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. It seems people want to interact with ChatGPT anytime, anywhere!
DeepSeek's Rise, but ChatGPT Remains Strong
The report also addresses the impact of competitors like DeepSeek. DeepSeek rapidly climbed to the global number two spot within 10 days and secured 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 data from market intelligence provider Similarweb, ChatGPT still holds the top position in terms of monthly unique website visits and monthly active mobile users. While facing strong competition, ChatGPT remains a dominant force.
