OpenAI gets US$2.91 every time ChatGPT is downloaded

ChatGPT has taken the world by storm since its debut in late 2022

Rowan Dunne

Published

9 hours ago

The world’s most well-known large language model has been raking in the dough like never before this year.

According to a new report from American business intelligence platform Appfigures, the AI model has pulled 673 per cent more revenue year-to-date than the same period in 2024 at US$1.35 billion.

Moreover, Appfigures highlighted that ChatGPT has been downloaded 2.8 times as much during the 7.5-month period than last year with 318 million installs. On average, the multi-purpose AI tool gets added to another smartphone 45 million times per month.

OpenAI has been getting US$2.91 of revenue every time the popular chatbot is downloaded and it has earned the artificial intelligence company over US$2 billion since its launch in late 2022, the figures showed.

This number is significantly higher than Anthropic’s LLM Claude, which has been getting US$2.51 per download; xAI’s Grok — a large language model from Elon Musk that’s been pulling US$0.75 per install after getting its own separate app; and Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT) (FRA: MSF) Copilot — an AI tool that has been yielding US$0.28 in revenue per new user.

ChatGPT’s impressive image generation capability is a significant factor contributing to its popularity. OpenAI’s recent advancements in this regard are worthy of note.

This story first came to light in an article from TechCrunch on Aug. 15.

Appfigures studied ChatGPT extensively in ‘Rise of AI Apps’ analysis

The latest data from the New York-based intelligence provider is not the first it has produced on OpenAI’s renowned large language model.

On Jan. 31, Appfigures covered Sam Altman’s machine learning system extensively in its Rise of AI Apps: Key Trends Shaping 2025 report. The immense number of downloads was a key topic.

“ChatGPT is once again outperforming the segment in downloads with 32 million in December being its best month thus far,” the analysis described in early 2025, “a 109 per cent increase from January 2024, and up 79 per cent year-over-year.”

Other interesting findings detailed in the report include that more than half of the LLM’s users are under 25, that its ratings improved by 128 per cent among users throughout last year and that 9 out of 10 who utilize it are male throughout most age groups.

“The gender gap is significant across age groups, especially in younger users, where male usage towers above female,” Appfigures specified without providing much explanation for the trend.

Within the first 18 days of its launch, ChatGPT significantly outperformed the world’s other most popular AI models, according to the firm.