According to TechSpot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT was the most downloaded free app on Apple’s iOS App Store for 2025. The chatbot now has over 800 million weekly users, which is a quadrupling of its user base in just the past year, adding over 300 million users since March 2024. It processes nearly 30,000 messages per second, with most adults using it to find information, and almost one-third of US teenagers use chatbots daily, 59% of whom use ChatGPT. Google’s rival, Gemini, also cracked the top 10, prompting OpenAI to declare a “code red” and shift focus to performance over new features. Despite this growth, OpenAI, a private company, does not plan to become profitable until at least 2029, even as it plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars.
The User Takeover is Real
Here’s the thing: those numbers aren’t just big, they’re behavior-changing. When most adults are using ChatGPT to find information instead of a search engine, that’s a tectonic shift. It’s basically a new default. And the teen adoption rate? That’s the real story. A generation is growing up with AI as a primary tool for homework, curiosity, and communication. That habit is going to stick. But this creates a weird tension. The tool is ubiquitous, yet the company behind it is bleeding money. We’re all using a service whose business model is still, frankly, a hope and a prayer.
Google’s Slow-Burn Threat
Now, Google’s position is fascinating. Gemini barely made the top 10 apps list, lagging behind Google’s own staples like Gmail, Maps, and Search. So why is OpenAI scared? Because Google is integrating AI everywhere. It’s in your browser, your email, your documents. You don’t need to download a separate app. That integrated, ambient access is a massive long-term threat. Google is playing the ecosystem game, and it’s a game they’ve won before. They’re willing to disrupt their own profitable search traffic to avoid becoming the next Blockbuster. That’s a powerful motivator OpenAI just doesn’t have.
The Profitability Black Hole
And this is where we hit the core issue. Where’s the money? The article points out that AI has not generated profits for most businesses, and related investments are singlehandedly propping up chunks of the US economy. That’s… not sustainable. OpenAI spending hundreds of billions while aiming for profitability in 2029 is a staggering bet. It assumes continuous, explosive growth and that they’ll eventually find a way to monetize all these free users at a scale that covers insane compute costs. What happens if user growth plateaus? Or if the next AI winter hits before 2029?
The Notable Absences
The list also tells us who’s losing. Microsoft’s Copilot is completely absent from the top 20. Let that sink in. Billions in investment, deep integration into Windows, and it can’t crack the most popular downloads. It suggests that for the average person, AI is still a distinct, standalone tool (ChatGPT) or a quietly integrated feature (Google), not a reason to adopt a new platform. Also gone? Twitter and Bluesky. Threads sitting at number two is a quiet victory for Meta, proving that just being “good enough” and attached to Instagram’s network is a winning formula. In a world obsessed with AI, the old rules of social media still apply.
