That’s according to a report Wednesday (July 29) by The Information, citing company data, which notes that this milestone comes seven months later than the artificial intelligence (AI) startup had initially projected.
Nonetheless, the report said, ChatGPT is still among the fast-growing apps in the history of the internet, achieving this scale in under four years.
The Information added that the road to 1 billion users was a difficult one, with growth slowing last fall after the user backlash to the GPT-5 model, and increased competition. Among ChatGPT’s main rivals is Google’s Gemini AI, which has 950 million monthly active users and the advantage of its integration with its parent company’s search engine.
OpenAI is also facing a challenge from Anthropic, which recently surpassed OpenAI in terms of revenue thanks to its popularity among enterprise customers. That’s led OpenAI to pivot aggressively toward business clients, The Information report said.
Sarah Friar, the company’s chief financial officer, noted recently that these clients make up 40% of OpenAI’s revenue, with that number expected to reach 50% by year’s end. Meanwhile, OpenAI projects $25 billion in revenue this year after bringing in $10 billion last year, while also forecasting $25 billion in cash burn, the report added.
While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned employees heading into this year of “rough vibes” in light of Google’s momentum, the company still holds a significant lead in paid consumer adoption, with over 50 million paying subscribers, The Information said.
ChatGPT reached 1 billion global monthly active app users in May, the fastest application in history to reach that scale.
“Google Maps, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube each needed between five and eight years to reach the same threshold. ChatGPT did it in three,” PYMNTS wrote in June.
That growth is in line with what PYMNTS Intelligence has monitored in consumer behavior, with research showing that more than 60% of consumers now begin daily planning, learning and shopping inside AI platforms. That means “not layering AI on top of existing habits but replacing those habits outright,” the report said.
Product discovery is the “clearest signal of that shift,” the report continued, with additional research showing 31.4% of AI users turned to generative AI to find product links in February.
Research from PYMNTS Intelligence has also shown the overall popularity of ChatGPT compared to its rivals, with 83% of AI users trying the platform at least once.
