ChatGPT's market share plummeted by 24 percentage points! Gemini and Grok frantically chased the price up - ZhiDongXi

Wisdom****Stuff (Public account: zhidxcom) Compilation｜Wan Guixia Edit | Xin Yuan

Zhidongzhi reported on February 6 that a survey by mobile data insights company Apptopia showed that as Google and other competitors speed up to catch up, ChatGPT’s lead in the consumer market is narrowing, and its market share has declined significantly.

Apptopia data shows that between January 2025 and January 2026,ChatGPTMarket share among U.S. mobile app daily active users increased from69.1% dropped to 45.3%. At the same time, GoogleGeminimarket share from14.7% increased to 25.1%, while Elon Musk’s Grokhas grown more rapidly, and its market share has increased from 1.6% jumped to 15.2%.

▲Comparison chart of market share changes of AI chatbots from January 2025 to January 2026 (Source: Big Technology)

In addition, Google’s parent companyAlphabetDuring its fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Sundar Pichai announced that Gemini’s monthly active users have exceeded750 million, higher than the previous quarter’s650 million.

Fortune magazine believes that if OpenAI’s market share on the consumer side continues to decline, it may bring uncertainty to its future IPO plans.

According to Apptopia data, the share of OpenAI’s ChatGPT application in the US market has fallen from 69.1% in January 2025 to 45.3% in January 2026.

During the same period, the market share of Google Gemini chatbot applications increased from 14.7% to 25.2%. Grok’s growth has been equally significant, with its market share reaching an all-time high of 15.2% in January 2026, compared with just 1.6% a year earlier.

Not only on mobile applications, ChatGPT is alsoWeb pageIts leading position has also been affected.

According to Similarweb’s website traffic data, in December 2025, the gap in visits between Gemini’s web pages Gemini.google.com and ChatGPT.com narrowed significantly.Geminiof visits year-on-yearan increase of 28.38%, while ChatGPTvisits compared to the same period last yeardown 5.59%.

The data also shows that Gemini broke through the single-month mark for the first time in January 2026.2 billionAlthough ChatGPT has rebounded after two consecutive months of decline, the overall number of visits is still lower than the historical peak in October 2025.

During Alphabet’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google parent Alphabet, said Gemini’s monthly active users have exceeded 750 million, up from 650 million in the previous quarter.

Foreign media mentioned that although market forecasts indicate that ChatGPT is still expected to reach 810 million monthly active users by the end of 2025 and maintain its leadership in user scale, the gap between the two parties is rapidly narrowing.

Pichai mentioned during the conference call,Gemini 3The release of is one of the important factors driving user growth. Meanwhile, Google’s AI image generation toolNano Banana ProIt also quickly became popular on social platforms because of its ultra-realistic generated effects, further increasing the attention of the product.

▲Introduction to Google Gemini 3 (Source: Google official website)

Under competitive pressure, OpenAI co-founder and CEOSam AltmanIt was announced in December last year that the company had entered an eight-week “red alert” state, requiring employees to refocus on core products.

In addition, foreign media also reminded that although application downloads and website traffic data can reflect the adoption trend of AI tools at the consumer level, they cannot fully present the overall AI market pattern. On the one hand, some application users may use them for both work and personal matters; on the other hand, this type of data does not cover API usage, and APIs are the main way for enterprises to integrate AI capabilities.

2. In the enterprise market, Anthropic is accelerating its rise

In the enterprise market, Anthropic shows stronger growth momentum.

According to research data from Anthropic investor Menlo Ventures, this AI unicorn currently accounts for approximately one thirdof enterprise-level market share, while OpenAI and Google Gemini’s share is approximately **25%**and 20%.

OpenAI is too difficult. It faces continued squeeze from Gemini in the consumer market, strong expansion from Anthropic in the enterprise market, and it also has to deal with fast-growing emerging competitors such as Grok.

Foreign media predict that if ChatGPT’s market share on the consumer side continues to decline, it may Further adding to the complexity of OpenAI’s push for a potential IPO, especially in the context that Anthropic is also considering listing and may act first.

Apptopia data also shows that about one-fifth of AI users use multiple applications at the same time. Fortune magazine believes that this shows that users are choosing different tools according to different tasks, and also provides room for AI companies to enter market segments through differentiated positioning.

As Anthropic’s core AI product, Claude’s user scale is not as large as that of some competitors, but its user engagement performance is outstanding. Survey data shows that in January 2026, the average daily usage time of Claude users reached 34.7 minutes. Although it fell slightly from December, it was still at an industry high.

▲Introduction to Claude (Source: Claude official website)

Conclusion: From a single company to multiple tools in parallel, ChatGPT has ushered in a new stage.

Tom Grant, vice president of research at Apptopia, mentioned that ChatGPT took the lead in opening up the public’s awareness of generative AI tools. However, as the gap in functionality and experience between Gemini, Claude, Grok and other products continues to narrow, users have begun to use multiple AI tools in combination according to different scenarios.

He believes that the AI ​​market may eventually be similar to the streaming media industry, with a few large platforms dominating, while there will still be many companies gaining survival space in their respective segments through product differentiation rather than relying solely on network effects.

For OpenAI, this means that ChatGPT still has a scale advantage, but its position on the consumer side is no longer as stable as it was in the early days.

Source: Fortune Magazine, Apptopia