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Sam Altman touts ChatGPT's 800 million weekly users, double all its main competitors combined

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on a stage.
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OpenAI chief Sam Altman dropped a staggering statistic this week.

ChatGPT has grown its weekly active user number to 800 million. That puts it in a distant first place compared to peers. In fact, if you combine the average users for its five main competitors combined, ChatGPT still has roughly double the number.

The chart above shows average monthly active users. For the sake of comparison, ChatGPT's 3.2 billion figure was calculated by multiplying its 800 million weekly figure by four.

Compare that to the 1.575 billion total across Meta AI, Google's Gemini, xAI's Grok, Perplexity, and Anthropic's Claude, which, when doubled, is still just 3.15 billion. (Note that the figure for Meta AI also includes users across all company platforms, not just a single app.)

Altman announced OpenAI's latest milestone when speaking at the company's annual DevDay conference in San Francisco on Monday.

The figure below shows that ChatGPT has more than doubled its user base over the last eight months, reporting over 400 million weekly active users in February.

Here's a quick timeline of its user growth:

  • November 2023: Altman says the company surpassed 100 million weekly active users at OpenAI's first-ever DevDay.
  • August 2024: Axios reports that ChatGPT has accumulated 200 million weekly active users.
  • December 2024: At The New York Times DealBook Summit, Altman reveals that the platform has over 300 million weekly active users.
  • February 2025: Reuters reports that the platform has more than 400 million weekly active users.
  • August 2025: The head of ChatGPT said the platform was on track to hit 700 million weekly active users, up from 500 million at the end of March.

ChatGPT, which debuted in late 2022, reached its first 100 million monthly active users within just a few months. That made it the fastest-growing app in history, UBS analysts wrote in early 2023.

"Thanks to all of you, AI has gone from something people build and play with to something people build with every day," Altman said at the conference on Monday.

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Jennifer Sor
Jennifer Sor is a senior reporter at Business Insider. She covers financial markets and the economy, with a focus on retail investing, job trends, and the pursuit of wealth. She regularly speaks to famed forecasters and top investors in markets, and her work has been referenced in outlets such as CNN, Forbes, and Bloomberg Opinion's "Money Stuff."  She also regularly appears on television and radio to speak about markets and the US economy.Prior to her time at Business Insider, Jennifer covered tech and business news at the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Business Journal. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara with a bachelor's degree in economics and English.Have an interesting story to share? Please reach out to her at jsor@bjinnox.com or @jennreports.81 on the encrypted messaging app Signal.