Few technologies have spread as fast as ChatGPT. Launched by OpenAI on 30 November 2022 as a free research preview, it became the fastest-growing consumer app in history and turned OpenAI into one of the most valuable private companies in the world.
Almost four years later, ChatGPT is used by more than 900 million people every week, OpenAI has confidentially filed for a stock market listing, and the competition has changed dramatically, with Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude taking a growing share of the market.
In this article, we’ve gathered the most important ChatGPT and OpenAI statistics for 2026, from users and usage to revenue, valuation and competition, with every figure dated and sourced.
ChatGPT statistics in a nutshell
- ChatGPT reached 1 million users in 5 days and 100 million users in about 2 months, a record at the time;
- It has more than 900 million weekly active users (February 2026), and was reportedly nearing 1 billion by late July 2026;
- OpenAI has more than 50 million consumer subscribers and more than 9 million paying business users (February 2026);
- India is ChatGPT’s second-largest market after the US, with 100 million weekly active users;
- OpenAI’s annualised revenue grew from $2 billion in 2023 to $6 billion in 2024 and more than $20 billion in 2025;
- In February 2026, OpenAI raised $110 billion at a $730 billion pre-money valuation;
- Microsoft holds roughly 27% of OpenAI Group PBC, worth about $135 billion at the time of the October 2025 restructuring;
- OpenAI confidentially filed for a US IPO in June 2026, with no listing date announced;
- ChatGPT’s share of worldwide generative AI website visits fell from 86.7% in January 2025 to 52.7% in May 2026, as Gemini and Claude gained ground;
- OpenAI’s newest model, GPT-6 Astra, was released on 3 September 2026.
Users, growth and usage
1. OpenAI was founded as a non-profit in 2015 and restructured into a public benefit corporation in 2025
OpenAI was founded in 2015 by Sam Altman, Elon Musk and others as a non-profit research lab. In 2019 it created a “capped-profit” company to raise outside capital, and in October 2025 it completed a restructuring into OpenAI Group PBC, a public benefit corporation controlled by the non-profit, now called the OpenAI Foundation. According to CNBC, the Foundation holds a 26% stake, Microsoft about 27%, and current and former employees and investors the remaining 47%.
Elon Musk left OpenAI’s board in 2018 and sued the company in 2024, accusing it of abandoning its founding mission. On 18 May 2026, a federal jury in Oakland found that Musk had waited too long to sue and rejected his claims. His lawyers said they would appeal.
2. ChatGPT reached its first 1 million users in just 5 days
ChatGPT launched on 30 November 2022 and reached 1 million users in 5 days. At the time, that made it by far the fastest platform to reach the milestone: Instagram, one of the fastest before it, had taken about 75 days.
3. It reached 100 million users in about 2 months
After two months, ChatGPT had reached an estimated 100 million monthly users. By doing so, it broke the record for the fastest-growing consumer app in history.
4. ChatGPT has more than 900 million weekly active users
OpenAI now reports users on a weekly basis, which is a stricter measure than monthly users. The figure has grown from 100 million weekly users in November 2023 to 400 million in February 2025, 800 million in October 2025 and more than 900 million in February 2026.
Growth has slowed since then. According to PYMNTS, citing The Information, ChatGPT was approaching 1 billion weekly active users at the end of July 2026, around seven months later than OpenAI had originally targeted. The ChatGPT app passed 1 billion monthly active users in mid-2026, according to Sensor Tower estimates.
5. Users send about 2.5 billion prompts to ChatGPT every day
In July 2025, Sam Altman said users were sending around 2.5 billion prompts to ChatGPT per day. That is roughly 29,000 prompts every second. OpenAI’s API, used by developers to build ChatGPT’s technology into their own products, handles billions more on top of that.
6. India is ChatGPT’s second-largest market, with 100 million weekly users
The US remains ChatGPT’s largest market, but in February 2026 Sam Altman said that India has 100 million weekly active users, making it the second-largest. India also has the largest number of student users of ChatGPT in the world. OpenAI opened an office in New Delhi in August 2025 and launched the lower-priced ChatGPT Go plan there first.
ChatGPT is available in most countries, but not officially in some, including China and Russia.
7. ChatGPT’s share of generative AI web traffic has fallen to about 53%
ChatGPT is still the most visited AI chatbot by a wide margin, but its lead is shrinking. According to Similarweb, its share of worldwide visits to generative AI websites fell from 86.7% in January 2025 to 52.7% in May 2026. Google’s Gemini rose from 5.7% to 27.3% over the same period, helped by its integration into Google Search, Android and Workspace, while Anthropic’s Claude jumped from about 2% to 8.9%, the fastest growth in the category.
A falling share does not mean falling usage: the whole category is growing fast, and ChatGPT’s own traffic has held up. It does show that ChatGPT is no longer the only AI assistant most people use.
8. OpenAI has more than 50 million consumer subscribers and 9 million paying business users
Most ChatGPT users are on the free plan, but paying users are growing fast. In February 2026, OpenAI said it had more than 50 million consumer subscribers, with January and February on track to be its largest months ever for new subscribers, and more than 9 million paying business users. Weekly users of Codex, its coding agent, had more than tripled since the start of the year to 1.6 million.
Models, plans and performance
9. The newest model, GPT-6 Astra, was released on 3 September 2026
ChatGPT has moved through several generations of models: GPT-3.5 at launch in 2022, GPT-4 in March 2023, GPT-5 in August 2025, several GPT-5.x updates in 2026, and now GPT-6 Astra, released on 3 September 2026.
OpenAI describes Astra as its most intelligent model so far, with a focus on “computer use”: operating software, browsers and documents to complete tasks rather than only answering questions. It is rolling out to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise users, and costs $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens in the API.
10. GPT-6 Astra scores 96% on a graduate-level science test, according to OpenAI
Benchmark results have improved dramatically since GPT-4. According to OpenAI’s own figures, GPT-6 Astra scores 96.0% on GPQA Diamond, a set of graduate-level biology, chemistry and physics questions, and 99.9% on ARC-AGI-3, an abstract reasoning test. OpenAI also says Astra helped improve a mathematical bound on the gaps between prime numbers.
These are results reported by OpenAI itself, and benchmark scores do not always translate into real-world reliability. Even the most advanced models can still make mistakes and state wrong information with confidence.
11. ChatGPT plans range from free to $200 per month
As of September 2026, ChatGPT’s main plans in the US are:
- Free: limited access to the flagship model, with ads in the US;
- Go ($8/month): more messages and features than Free, also with ads in the US;
- Plus ($20/month): ad-free, with higher limits and access to the most capable models;
- Pro ($100 or $200/month): much higher usage limits and the most powerful model versions;
- Business and Enterprise: per-user pricing for companies, with admin controls and data excluded from training.
OpenAI began showing ads to some US users of the Free and Go plans in early 2026, its first move into advertising. Prices vary by country.
12. OpenAI’s computing capacity grew almost tenfold in two years
Running ChatGPT at this scale requires enormous computing power. According to OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar, the company’s computing capacity grew from 0.2 gigawatts (GW) in 2023 to 0.6 GW in 2024 and about 1.9 GW in 2025, and its revenue has grown closely in line with it. OpenAI has signed long-term compute deals with Microsoft, Oracle, CoreWeave, Amazon and NVIDIA, among others.
Financials
13. OpenAI’s annualised revenue passed $20 billion in 2025
OpenAI’s revenue has roughly tripled every year. According to Sarah Friar, annualised revenue grew from $2 billion in 2023 to $6 billion in 2024 and more than $20 billion in 2025. For comparison, in 2022, the year ChatGPT launched, OpenAI’s revenue was only around $10 million, according to Reuters.
Most of it comes from ChatGPT subscriptions, business plans and the API, with advertising added in 2026. OpenAI is still spending heavily on computing power to keep up with demand, so revenue growth has not yet translated into profits.
14. OpenAI was valued at $730 billion before its latest $110 billion round
On 27 February 2026, OpenAI announced $110 billion in new investment at a $730 billion pre-money valuation, including $30 billion from SoftBank, $30 billion from NVIDIA and $50 billion from Amazon. That implies a post-money valuation of around $840 billion, up from about $29 billion in early 2023.
Few private companies in history have been valued this highly.
15. Microsoft owns about 27% of OpenAI
Microsoft has been OpenAI’s most important partner since 2019, investing a total of about $13.8 billion. In the October 2025 restructuring, it received a stake of about 27% in OpenAI Group PBC, valued at around $135 billion at the time, nearly ten times its investment. Microsoft also keeps access to OpenAI’s models until 2032 and integrates them across products such as Copilot, Bing and Microsoft 365.
The partnership is no longer exclusive, though: OpenAI now also works with Amazon, Oracle and other cloud providers.
16. OpenAI has confidentially filed for an IPO
According to Reuters reporting, OpenAI confidentially filed for a US initial public offering on 8 June 2026. A confidential filing lets a company prepare its listing with the SEC before publishing its financials. As of September 2026, OpenAI has not announced a listing date, price range or ticker, and reports suggest the listing could slip to 2027.
Until it lists, retail investors cannot buy OpenAI shares directly. The most common way to get indirect exposure is through listed companies that own stakes in it, such as Microsoft, SoftBank, NVIDIA and Amazon, which you can buy through brokers such as Interactive Brokers. Keep in mind that OpenAI is only a small part of each of these companies’ value.
Competition, future and impact
17. Competition has intensified sharply
When the first version of this article was written, ChatGPT had almost no serious competition. That has changed:
- Google Gemini: built into Search, Android and Workspace, it has around 950 million monthly active users, according to PYMNTS;
- Anthropic’s Claude: the fastest-growing AI chatbot by web traffic, and particularly strong with businesses and developers. Anthropic reportedly overtook OpenAI in revenue in 2026 and has also filed for an IPO;
- Others: DeepSeek, xAI’s Grok, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and Meta AI.
ChatGPT is still the largest consumer AI assistant, but the market is now a genuine race rather than a one-horse show.
18. AI tools like ChatGPT could affect at least 10% of tasks for 80% of US workers
A 2023 study by OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania researchers estimated that around 80% of the US workforce could have at least 10% of their work tasks affected by large language models, and about 19% of workers could see at least half of their tasks affected.
The study found that exposure spans all wage levels, with higher-income jobs involving writing, programming and information processing likely to be more exposed than jobs in services, manufacturing or agriculture. Since then, the rise of AI agents that can operate software on their own has made these questions even more pressing.
19. Risks and limitations
Despite the progress, ChatGPT and similar tools still come with important risks and limitations:
- Wrong answers: models can still produce inaccurate or made-up information with confidence;
- Privacy: questions remain about how user data is stored and used, especially now that ads are part of the free product;
- Cybersecurity: OpenAI rates GPT-6 Astra at the “Critical” level for cyber capabilities under its own safety framework, meaning it could find and exploit software vulnerabilities, and has restricted some uses as a result;
- Over-reliance: concerns about sycophancy and users trusting the chatbot too much in areas such as health and mental wellbeing;
- Education: cheating on essays and exams remains a challenge for schools and universities.
Conclusion
In less than four years, ChatGPT has gone from a research preview to a product used by close to a billion people every week, and OpenAI has grown from a lab with around $10 million in revenue into a company valued at more than $800 billion and preparing for one of the largest IPOs in history.
The next phase looks different from the first. Growth has slowed, competitors such as Gemini and Claude are taking share, and OpenAI is still investing heavily ahead of profits. At the same time, models like GPT-6 Astra are moving AI from answering questions to doing work on a computer, which could make these tools far more valuable, and far more consequential.
Whether you use ChatGPT, invest in the companies behind it or simply follow the AI race, these are the numbers worth watching in 2026.
