ChatGPT Reaches 1 Billion Monthly App Users as Public Mood on AI Sours
Sensor Tower estimates OpenAI's chatbot became the fastest app ever to hit one billion monthly users, even as graduates jeer AI at commencements and rivals Claude and Meta AI grow several times faster.
College graduates booed mentions of artificial intelligence at this spring's commencement ceremonies. Pope Leo, in a letter published May 25, warned of widening inequality driven by the world's appetite for it. Workers tell pollsters they avoid it on moral, environmental or privacy grounds. And in May 2026, ChatGPT's mobile app crossed one billion monthly users anyway.
The estimate comes from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which says OpenAI's chatbot reached the milestone roughly 3.5 years after its November 2022 launch, the fastest any app has ever done it. Google Maps, the previous record holder, needed about five years.
A caveat worth stating plainly: the billion is a third-party estimate of app users, not a company disclosure. OpenAI's own preferred yardstick is weekly active users, which it put at more than 900 million across web and mobile back in February, when it also claimed more than six times the monthly web visits and mobile sessions of the next largest AI platform. The company did not respond to CNBC's requests for comment on the new figure.
However you count, the gap behind the leader is closing. Sensor Tower's year-over-year estimates of monthly usage growth:
- Meta AI: up 973 percent
- Anthropic's Claude: up 640 percent
- ChatGPT: up 62 percent
Google's Gemini and ByteDance's Doubao, with its international version Dola, round out the apps trailing ChatGPT, the firm said. Rival growth has come from real model improvements rather than novelty, in Sensor Tower's reading.
One episode this year showed how quickly public feeling can move product numbers. On February 28, the day after OpenAI announced a deal to deploy its models on classified Pentagon networks, ChatGPT uninstalls jumped roughly 295 percent day over day, per Sensor Tower. That same weekend Claude, whose maker refused involvement in Pentagon operations, outpaced ChatGPT in US downloads for the first time and took the App Store's top spot.
"While negative sentiment towards AI... is undeniably growing, consumers are increasingly using and relying on these platforms."
Abe Yousef, senior insights analyst at Sensor Tower, to CNBC
Workplace data points the same way. A Boston Consulting Group poll of about 12,000 frontline workers, released June 3, found 74 percent now use AI regularly, up 23 percentage points in a year, and more than 40 percent of regular users reported saving the equivalent of a full workday each week. The United Nations has estimated the AI market could exceed $4.8 trillion by 2033.
"The strong trajectory of AI adoption shows no sign of slowing," said Hanno Stegmann, a managing director and partner at BCG X, the consultancy's AI unit. He reads the backlash as reasonable rather than reflexive. "I understand why a generation entering the workforce and into this much change feels uncertain. That is a rational response to a genuine transition," he said.
Even the builders are sounding cautious. Anthropic has called for a pause in global AI development, warning in a blog post: If systems are capable of fully building their own successors, the ways we secure them, monitor them, and shape their behavior all grow much more important.
The contradiction may not trouble the companies' bankers. OpenAI submitted its IPO filing on Monday, a week after Anthropic filed its own prospectus with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. A billion monthly users, souring mood or not, is the kind of number you take to market.
