OpenAI's ChatGPT mobile application has just recorded a remarkable revenue milestone when it reached a total of 3 billion USD in spending from global consumers.
According to Appfigures, an app analytics company, this figure includes total spending on both iOS and Android platforms since the app was launched in May 2023, when ChatGPT was only available on iOS.
It is noteworthy that most of this revenue will be concentrated in 2025. According to Appfigures, users around the world have spent about 2.48 billion USD on the ChatGPT application alone this year.
This spending level increased to 408% compared to 487 million USD in 2024. Previously, in 2023, the first year of the application launch, the application earned only 42.9 million USD, before breaking through strongly in the following year with a growth rate of more than 1,000%.
These figures reflect the rapid increase in the scale and level of engagement of ChatGPT users on mobile devices.
According to Appfigures, ChatGPT took just 31 months to reach the $3 billion mark in spending, much faster than TikTok, the world's top-grossing app that took up to 58 months to reach the same milestone.
ChatGPT also surpassed major streaming platforms such as Disney+ and HBO Max, which took 42 and 46 months to reach this threshold, respectively.
In the context of an increasingly competitive AI market, Grok is an application of the emerging xAI company as the closest revenue trajectory of ChatGPT.
Grok was released at the end of 2023 to X users who signed up for Premium Plus, before expanding to the public next year.
When comparing the accumulated spending of AI applications since the beginning of making money, Grok is the only name that is currently closely following the growth rate of ChatGPT.
However, consumer spending is not the only measure to assess AI acceptance or long-term revenue potential.
Currently, most of ChatGPT's revenue comes from paid subscription packages such as ChatGPT Plus at $20 per month or ChatGPT Pro at $200 per month for advanced users.
In addition to the registration model, AI applications can also generate revenue from many other sources such as incentives for developers or advertisers.
OpenAI has also recently launched its own app store in ChatGPT and said it will look to make money from the platform in the future.
Meanwhile, big opponents are also accelerating. Google is testing the integration of advertising into AI-powered search experiences, while Anthropic is said to be targeting the corporate market with the ambition of achieving tens of billions of dollars in revenue in the coming years. This shows that the AI revenue race is just getting started.
