- ChatGPT’s market share dropped below 50% for the first time.
- Rivals Gemini, Claude significantly gained ground in the market.
- Users now switch; AI app market experiences robust growth.
ChatGPT’s grip on the AI assistant market is starting to loosen, though it’s still miles ahead of the competition. New data shows OpenAI’s chatbot has dipped below the 50% market share mark for the first time since its debut over three years ago, as rivals like Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude and xAI’s Grok chip away at its lead. The numbers suggest people are no longer settling for just one AI assistant.
How Much Of The AI Assistant Market Does ChatGPT Still Control?
According to Sensor Tower’s State of AI Report 2026, cited by TechCrunch, ChatGPT’s market share fell to 46.4% by the end of May, down from over 50% in January. Gemini, meanwhile, climbed to 27.7%, and Claude moved up to 10.3%.
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Smaller players like Grok, Perplexity, DeepSeek and Meta AI each held under 5% individually. In terms of raw numbers, ChatGPT still leads comfortably with over 1.1 billion monthly users, followed by Gemini at 662 million and Claude at around 245 million. Notably, ChatGPT had earlier become the fastest app ever to cross the one billion monthly user mark.
The report also flagged a shift in how people use these tools, switching between assistants based on features, integrations and trust. It pointed to OpenAI’s reported partnership with the US Department of Defence in February as a moment that lined up with a spike in uninstalls, hinting that corporate decisions can directly affect how loyal users stay.
Why Is The AI App Market Still Growing Despite Slower User Growth?
Even as ChatGPT’s dominance softens, the wider AI app industry isn’t slowing down. Sensor Tower projects nearly 2.3 billion downloads and over $4.2 billion in consumer spending globally in the first half of 2026, up sharply from $1.83 billion in the same period last year, though the pace of growth is easing.
Asia saw a 3.3% drop in downloads in early 2026 due to weaker activity in China and India, yet it remains the top region for downloads overall, while North America and Europe lead on spending.
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Time spent on AI apps is expected to nearly double, from 17.2 billion hours in the first half of 2025 to almost 36 billion hours in the same period this year, with ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude making up most of that usage.
The report also noted that OpenAI has been expanding ads within ChatGPT, with about 17% of daily users seeing ads by May, alongside growing shopping referral traffic to retailers like Target, Walmart and Costco.
