OpenAI’s ChatGPT has reached a milestone that few technologies in history have achieved, with its user base soaring to 800 million active users per week, underscoring the platform’s dominance in the artificial intelligence space and its unprecedented global reach.
The figure, revealed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at the company’s annual DevDay event on Monday, marks a dramatic rise in engagement for the AI chatbot — a product that has reshaped how people interact with technology in less than two years.
A recent joint study by OpenAI, Duke University, and Harvard University, published in September, estimated that as of July 2025, ChatGPT had already surpassed 700 million monthly active users, roughly 10% of the world’s adult population. Researchers said that ChatGPT was processing more than 2.5 billion messages per day, equivalent to about 29,000 queries per second.
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“For a new technology, this speed of global diffusion has no precedent,” the researchers wrote, emphasizing that no other consumer technology — not smartphones, social media, or even the internet — spread as rapidly across the globe.
A New Benchmark in AI Adoption
ChatGPT’s rise represents one of the fastest adoption curves in tech history. Since November 2023, when Altman announced that ChatGPT had 100 million weekly active users, the figure has increased by 700%, highlighting the platform’s accelerating integration into everyday life and business workflows.
The chatbot has become a cornerstone of modern productivity, with millions of users depending on it daily for research, coding, education, journalism, design, and communication. OpenAI’s expansion of GPT-4, along with custom GPTs and integrations into Microsoft’s ecosystem, has further fueled its growth, making it a fixture in schools, offices, and homes.
Analysts note that ChatGPT’s current scale places it among the top-tier global digital platforms, rivaling the reach of major social networks. For comparison, Meta’s WhatsApp has about 2.8 billion users, Instagram 2.4 billion, and TikTok around 1.6 billion — but none have achieved ChatGPT’s adoption rate in such a short period.
Dominating the LLM Market
ChatGPT continues to dominate the large language model (LLM) landscape. Its weekly user base far exceeds that of competing AI chatbots such as xAI’s Grok, which has 65 million monthly active users, and Anthropic’s Claude and Perplexity AI, each with around 30 million monthly users.
Industry experts attribute OpenAI’s lead to a combination of technological sophistication, strong partnerships, and ease of access. The chatbot’s web and mobile platforms are available in over 190 countries, and OpenAI’s freemium model has allowed rapid scaling while drawing millions into its paid ChatGPT Plus tier for enhanced capabilities through GPT-4.
The user growth also underscores the central role ChatGPT now plays in the global digital economy. With over 2.5 billion messages processed daily, the platform has effectively become the world’s most heavily used AI interface — shaping industries, redefining customer support, and transforming the way people learn and create.
At DevDay, Altman described ChatGPT’s growth as “the clearest signal yet that the world is ready to work with AI at scale.” He added that OpenAI would continue developing tools to make “AI as useful, safe, and personal as possible.”
The company’s roadmap includes expanding the capabilities of GPT-5, refining multimodal tools, and deepening integrations with enterprise systems through ChatGPT Enterprise.
The explosion in ChatGPT’s user base comes as global competition in AI intensifies. Tech giants such as Google, Anthropic, and Elon Musk’s xAI are ramping up investments to capture a share of the fast-growing market. Meanwhile, China’s AI ecosystem, led by Baidu’s Ernie Bot and Alibaba’s Qwen, is expanding rapidly — though Western platforms remain restricted there.
With nearly a billion people now using ChatGPT weekly, analysts believe that OpenAI’s need for infrastructure expansion has never been greater. The company has been rallying investors in its multibillion-dollar push to expand data centers around the world.