OpenAI’s flagship product, ChatGPT, has surpassed 200 million weekly users, more than doubling its count from a year ago.
This, according to a report from Axios quoting OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Per the article, Altman said, in a statement:
“People are using our tools now as a part of their daily lives, making a real difference in areas like healthcare and education—whether it's helping with routine tasks, solving hard problems, or unlocking creativity.”
Weekly users
The 200 million weekly user milestone is certainly significant, but it makes direct comparisons to user-bases in the technology market difficult. Most organizations report monthly user counts.
Netflix, for example, has an estimated subscriber base of 278 million paid subscribers. Those are monthly numbers so, technically, it’s possible that ChatGPT sees more monthly usage than the streaming giant.
In another comparison, Elon Musk’s X.com boasts nearly 600 million monthly users which would put it well below ChatGPT if we extrapolate the weekly figure to an extreme-end optimistic projection of 800 million monthly users.
Apples and oranges
However, comparing weekly users to monthly paid subscribers or monthly unpaid users is an apples and oranges endeavor. Based on the data available, it’s unclear if ChatGPTs 200 million weekly users visit the site once a month or every day. The actual monthly figure may very well be 200 million users who each visit around once per week. It could also be much higher depending on the number of unique users per week over a 30 day period.
That being said, the service claims to have added 100 million users over the past year which would likely place it among the top technology platform performers by user growth over the past 12 months.