ChatGPT now reaches 1.2 billion people every week. Sam Altman confirmed the figure at OpenAI’s DevDay on September 29, 2026 – a jump of 300 million weekly users in seven months, and the clearest answer yet to anyone who thought ChatGPT’s growth had stalled.
The business behind it has changed shape too. Enterprise revenue overtook consumer revenue in August, ChatGPT’s ad business hit a $1 billion run-rate in under 200 days, and OpenAI’s IPO has shifted to 2027.
Meanwhile, the market-share story is more nuanced than it was earlier in the year: ChatGPT’s share of AI web traffic has actually ticked back up, even as it continues to lose ground on mobile. Here are the most recent ChatGPT stats as of October 2026.
The Standout ChatGPT Stats – October 2026
- 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week (OpenAI, September 29, 2026)
- ChatGPT’s share of global AI web traffic has recovered to 55.5%, up from a low of 52.7% (Similarweb)
- OpenAI’s annualised revenue run-rate passed $40 billion in mid-August 2026
- Enterprise revenue overtook consumer revenue on August 14, 2026 – two quarters ahead of target
- ChatGPT Ads reached a $1 billion annualised run-rate by August 31, 2026, and now runs in 60+ countries
- OpenAI has 2 million+ business customers and around 50 million paying subscribers
- OpenAI’s valuation stands at $852 billion, with an IPO now expected in 2027
- ChatGPT’s share of the global AI app market fell below half for the first time, to 46.4% (Sensor Tower, May 2026)
JUST IN: Only 4.5% of U.S. consumers have a paid subscription to ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, per a16z analysis.
— Polymarket (@Polymarket) October 5, 2026
ChatGPT User Stats
1.2 billion weekly users (September 29, 2026). OpenAI’s DevDay 2026 recap cites “our collective 1.2B weekly users”, up from 900 million in February 2026.
Takeaway: ChatGPT added 300 million weekly users in seven months – roughly the population of the US.
| Date | ChatGPT Weekly Users |
| September 2026 | 1.2 billion |
| February 2026 | 900 million |
| October 2025 | 800 million |
| July 2025 | 700 million |
| February 2025 | 400 million |
Source: OpenAI, via TechnologyChecker
Takeaway: weekly users have tripled in 19 months – there’s no sign of a growth ceiling yet.
ChatGPT became the fastest app ever to reach 1 billion monthly users (June 2026, Sensor Tower).
Takeaway: it beat TikTok, Instagram and every other consumer app to the milestone.
~50 million paying subscribers across Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise (OpenAI, early 2026).
Takeaway: only around 4% of weekly users pay – which is exactly why OpenAI has moved into advertising.
2 million+ business customers.
Takeaway: business adoption is accelerating, with OpenAI’s business customer count up 32% month on month in July alone.
20 million weekly users of OpenAI’s AI coding and work products (Codex, ChatGPT Work and related tools), per slides shown at an August 19 all-hands.
Takeaway: agents and coding tools are now a mass-market product, not a developer niche.
ChatGPT Market Share Stats
The market-share picture depends heavily on which data source you use – and in the latest numbers, ChatGPT is holding up better on web than on mobile.
55.5% of global AI web traffic. Similarweb’s latest update (published September 7, 2026) shows ChatGPT’s share recovering from 52.7% to 55.5%, as Gemini slipped back from 27.8% to 25.6%.
Takeaway: ChatGPT’s year-long slide in web share has stabilised – for now.
| AI Platform | 12 Months Earlier | Latest (Aug 2026 update) |
| ChatGPT | 73.3% | 55.5% |
| Gemini | 12.9% | 25.6% |
| Claude | 1.9% | 9.3% |
| DeepSeek | 4.0% | 3.4% |
| Grok | 2.6% | 2.4% |
| Copilot | 2.0% | 1.6% |
| Perplexity | 2.0% | 0.9% |
Source: Similarweb, September 7, 2026
Takeaway: even after the rebound, ChatGPT has lost almost 18 points of share in a year – nearly all of it to Gemini and Claude.
46.4% of the global AI assistant app market (Sensor Tower, end of May 2026), with Gemini on 27.7% and Claude on 10.3%, as reported by TechCrunch.
Takeaway: on apps, ChatGPT no longer holds a majority – the first time since it launched in November 2022.
79.4% of AI chatbot referral traffic (Statcounter, August 2026). Statcounter measures clicks from chatbots to other websites, up from 76.87% in June.
Takeaway: for SEOs, ChatGPT is still by far the biggest AI referral source – roughly four out of five AI referral clicks.
#1 generative AI service on Cloudflare Radar on every date sampled through September 30, 2026, with Claude #2.
Takeaway: whatever the share numbers say, ChatGPT is still the AI service people visit most.
OpenAI’s crawl-to-referral ratio improved to 309:1 in Q3 2026 – the best of any AI lab, versus 988:1 for Anthropic and 1,083:1 for Perplexity (Cloudflare Radar via TechnologyChecker).
Takeaway: ChatGPT now sends more traffic back to the sites it reads than any other AI lab – though still far less than Google.
OpenAI Revenue & Valuation Stats
$40 billion+ annualised revenue run-rate (mid-August 2026). CNBC reported CFO Sarah Friar told shareholders the run-rate was growing more than 20% month on month in July. Sources speaking to CNBC around DevDay suggested it may have reached as high as ~$68-70 billion by late September, though OpenAI hasn’t confirmed this.
Takeaway: OpenAI’s revenue run-rate has roughly doubled since the start of 2026.
Enterprise revenue overtook consumer revenue on August 14, 2026. OpenAI entered the year at a 60/40 consumer-to-enterprise split.
Takeaway: ChatGPT is no longer mainly a consumer business – enterprise is now the growth engine.
Q2 2026 revenue: $6.7 billion, up 18% on Q1’s $5.7 billion – with an operating loss of $12.3 billion, widening from $9.3 billion.
Takeaway: revenue is growing fast, but losses are growing faster.
ChatGPT Ads: $1 billion annualised run-rate by August 31, 2026, less than 200 days after a February US launch. Ads now run in 60+ countries for Free and Go users.
Takeaway: advertising has become a billion-dollar line faster than almost any ad product in history – expect AI ads to be a big topic for marketers in 2027.
$852 billion valuation, set in March 2026’s $122 billion round and reconfirmed by a ~$7 billion employee tender in August. Reports suggest OpenAI has held talks around a pre-IPO round at roughly $1.2 trillion.
Takeaway: OpenAI remains one of the most valuable private companies ever.
IPO now expected in 2027. OpenAI confidentially filed a draft S-1 on June 8, 2026, but Friar told employees in August it will go public in 2027 – or sooner only if the business keeps inflecting.
Takeaway: the September listing window came and went – don’t expect OpenAI shares before next year.
~$278 billion of projected negative free cash flow from 2026 to 2030, per a presentation reported by the Financial Times via Reuters, against revenue forecast to rise from $36 billion this year to $350 billion in 2030.
Takeaway: OpenAI is betting the farm on compute – profitability isn’t expected until around 2030.
Other Recent ChatGPT Developments
- GPT-6 Astra launched on September 3, 2026, followed by cheaper GPT-6 Sol and Luna models on September 22. Demand was high enough that OpenAI paused new $200 Pro sign-ups on September 10.
- Dots, an always-on ChatGPT agent, and a new $500/month Pro tier were announced at DevDay.
- ChatGPT Atlas, OpenAI’s standalone browser, was shut down on August 9, 2026, with its features folded into the ChatGPT desktop app.
- ChatGPT for Teens launched globally on August 18, 2026, with stronger content protections and parental controls.
Takeaway: OpenAI’s product focus has shifted firmly from chat to agents that do work on your behalf.
The Bigger Picture
As of October 2026, ChatGPT is bigger than ever – 1.2 billion weekly users, a $40 billion+ revenue run-rate and a billion-dollar ad business. It’s also no longer the only game in town: Gemini owns a quarter of AI web traffic, Claude is winning in enterprise and coding, and ChatGPT’s app share has dipped below half.
The next big markers to watch are OpenAI’s 2027 IPO plans and whether its web-share rebound holds through the end of the year.
Want the fuller picture? See our AI Usage Statistics round-up, plus Claude AI Stats, Google Gemini Stats, Grok AI Stats, Perplexity AI Stats, OpenClaw AI Stats.
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