ChatGPT launched publicly in late 2022, and OpenAI reported a valuation of $852 billion after its latest completed funding round in 2026. It has more than 1 billion weekly active users and has grown into a tool used for research, writing, product discovery, shopping, business use, and advertising.
In the US, 44% of adults now use ChatGPT, rising to 61% among 18 to 29-year-olds. 39% of US consumers have used AI for online shopping, while 57% of B2B marketers in one 2026 survey named ChatGPT their go-to AI tool.
These ChatGPT stats show how the tool is being used, who is using it, and what they're using it for.
Key ChatGPT statistics
Here are the headline ChatGPT statistics for 2026:
| Statistic | Latest figure | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly active users | 1B+ | 2026 | OpenAI |
| US adults who use ChatGPT | 44% | 2026 | Pew Research |
| US adults aged 18–29 who use ChatGPT | 61% | 2026 | Pew Research |
| Messages sent per day | 2.5B+ | 2025 | OpenAI |
| Messages classed as Asking | 49% | 2025 study | OpenAI |
| Personal consumer usage | ~70% | 2025 study | OpenAI |
| US consumers who have used AI for online shopping | 39% | 2025 | Adobe |
| AI referral traffic generated by ChatGPT | 87.4% | 2026 benchmark | Conductor |
| B2B marketers naming ChatGPT their go-to AI tool | 57% | 2026 survey | B2B Marketing |
| Paying business users | 9M+ | 2026 | OpenAI |
| ChatGPT Ads annualized revenue run rate | $1B | 2026 | OpenAI |
Sources: OpenAI funding; OpenAI ChatGPT Ads milestone; Pew Research Center; Adobe; Conductor; B2B Marketing
ChatGPT users and demographics
ChatGPT skews younger, but the gap between age groups has become much closer as adoption has spread. US data shows usage increased in every age group between 2023 and 2026, with the biggest gain among 30 to 49-year-olds.
The change is more prominent when comparing the 2023 and 2026 data:
| Age group | 2023 | 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18–29 | 33% | 61% | +28 pp |
| 30–49 | 21% | 55% | +34 pp |
| 50–64 | 13% | 37% | +24 pp |
| 65+ | 4% | 19% | +15 pp |
The fastest growth was not limited to the youngest users. Adoption among 30 to 49-year-olds rose by 34 percentage points between 2023 and 2026, while the 50 to 64 and 65+ groups also posted substantial gains from much lower starting points.
Source: Pew Research Center
How many people use ChatGPT?
ChatGPT has more than 1 billion weekly active users, according to OpenAI. The platform had around 700 million weekly users when GPT-5 launched in 2025 and more than 800 million by the end of that year.
The longer-term growth shows just how much ChatGPT has grown. OpenAI says ChatGPT reached 100 million weekly active users within months of launch, which means its weekly audience has increased roughly tenfold since the early adoption period.
The growth has continued even as the user base has grown. ChatGPT moved from its first 100 million weekly users to the 1 billion mark in under four years.
Sources: OpenAI GPT-5 launch; OpenAI State of Enterprise AI; OpenAI ChatGPT Ads milestone
What are the demographics of ChatGPT users?
ChatGPT's US audience is younger, while usage is evenly split between men and women.
ChatGPT users skew younger, with 61% of US adults aged 18–29 using ChatGPT, compared with 55% of 30–49-year-olds, 37% of 50–64-year-olds and 19% of adults aged 65+. Usage is evenly split by gender, with 44% of both men and women using ChatGPT.
Gender is much less of a divider for ChatGPT, with identical usage among US men and women at 44%. That's different from competitors: Gemini was used by 29% of men and 20% of women, Copilot by 22% and 13%, Grok by 11% and 4%, and Claude by 9% and 4%.
Usage frequency also changes by age when looking at AI chatbots more generally. 31% of adults aged 18 to 29 and 34% of those aged 30 to 49 use chatbots daily, compared with 19% of 50 to 64-year-olds and 7% of adults aged 65 and over.
Sources: Pew Research Center age data; Pew Research Center gender data
How is ChatGPT used around the world?
ChatGPT is used worldwide, with usage growing in major markets such as Brazil and in faster-growing markets in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa.
ChatGPT adoption has expanded past its earliest markets. OpenAI's Q1 2026 data found some of the biggest gains in messages per capita ranking came from the Dominican Republic and Haiti, both up nine places, followed by Japan at eight places, Mexico at six and Tanzania at six.
Brazil is already one of ChatGPT's three largest markets by weekly active users. OpenAI says the number of users in Brazil nearly doubled over the previous year, with people in the country sending around 215 million ChatGPT messages per day.
The age profile is also changing internationally. The share of ChatGPT messages sent by users aged 35 and over increased in almost every country OpenAI measured, with their global share rising by around five percentage points year over year. In France and Czechia, the increase was more than 10 percentage points.
Sources: OpenAI Signals Q1 2026; OpenAI global usage data; OpenAI Brazil
How people use ChatGPT
ChatGPT is used for more than writing. OpenAI's consumer study found information, advice, and recommendations make up the largest share of messages, while a US survey found information search and job-related tasks are the two most common reasons people use AI.
The two datasets look at different populations, but point in the same direction. Chatbots are being used for information and to inform decisions, alongside content creation, planning, analysis, and entertainment.
What do people use ChatGPT for?
People use ChatGPT mainly to ask for information or advice, complete tasks such as writing and planning, and for reflection or entertainment.
49% of consumer ChatGPT messages are classed as ‘Asking’, according to OpenAI. ‘Doing’ accounts for 40% and ‘Expressing’ 11%.
‘Asking’ includes requests for information, clarification, advice and recommendations. ‘Doing’ includes tasks such as drafting text, planning, and programming, while ‘Expressing’ covers reflection, exploration, and entertainment.
Another survey of user intent shows that 42% of US adults say they use AI chatbots to search for information, 38% of employed adults use them for job-related tasks, 25% use them for fun or entertainment, and 24% use them to create or edit images and videos. 20% also report using chatbots for medical advice and the same share for diet or fitness information.
Sources: OpenAI consumer usage study; Pew Research Center chatbot use
How often do people use ChatGPT and AI chatbots?
ChatGPT is used at very high frequency, processing billions of messages each day while around a quarter of US adults use AI chatbots daily.
ChatGPT processes more than 2.5 billion messages per day, including more than 330 million per day in the US, according to OpenAI's latest published data.
24% of US adults use AI chatbots daily, with 16% using them several times a day or almost constantly.
Daily use is highest among adults under 50. 31% of 18 to 29-year-olds and 34% of 30 to 49-year-olds use chatbots daily, compared with 19% of 50 to 64-year-olds and 7% of adults aged 65 and over.
Sources: OpenAI economic analysis; Pew Research Center daily chatbot use
How do people search differently in ChatGPT?
People search differently in ChatGPT by using longer, more detailed prompts and follow-up questions instead of relying on a single short query.
Between November 2025 and February 2026, the average number of prompts per ChatGPT session increased 50%, from around 1.17 to 1.75 prompts per session. Users are asking more follow-up questions and tweaking their original request as the conversation develops.
The prompts themselves are also different from search queries. Between 65% and 85% of ChatGPT prompts couldn’t be matched to any keyword in a database of more than 27 billion search terms during one study.
A Google search such as ‘best project management software’ can become a more detailed ChatGPT prompt containing company size, budget, existing tools, required features, and the problem the user is facing.
Search-enabled prompts are becoming longer too. The average increased from 4.7 words in early 2025 to 8.7 words in early 2026. At the same time, prompts resembling traditional search terms increased from 18.9% to 34.9% between October 2025 and February 2026.
This creates a different type of search demand. Traditional keyword data can show that people search for ‘best project management software,’ but it won’t capture all the specific requirements, comparisons, and follow-up questions people include when researching in ChatGPT.
Source: Semrush, ChatGPT traffic analysis: Insights from 17 months of clickstream data
Does ChatGPT usage increase over time?
Yes. ChatGPT usage tends to increase after signup as users send more messages and try more types of tasks.
OpenAI found users sent 50% more messages per day six months after signing up than during their first month. The number of distinct ChatGPT capabilities they had tried also doubled over the same period.
This suggests users don't repeat the same behavior; instead, they expand into other tasks as they become familiar with the product.
A survey also found that 30% of US adults say chatbots help their productivity, 28% say they help them stay informed, and 21% say they help creativity. Only 5% said chatbots hurt productivity or how informed they are.
Sources: OpenAI adoption research; Pew Research Center chatbot impact
ChatGPT search, shopping and product discovery
People are using ChatGPT to research products, compare choices, and make buying decisions now. ChatGPT can influence which brands or products are considered even when no referral visit occurs.
Referral traffic only captures the users who click through, while recommendations, product mentions, and citations in ChatGPT can affect the decision before a user clicks.
How is ChatGPT used for shopping and product research?
People use ChatGPT and other AI tools to research products, compare options, get recommendations, and assess buying decisions before visiting a retailer.
39% of US consumers said they had used AI for online shopping in a consumer research study. Among those users, 85% said AI improved the shopping experience.
Other research found 25% of consumers use AI platforms as a primary source when searching for information, making purchase decisions, or finding recommendations. 49% said they would use AI to search for personalized product recommendations.
ChatGPT's shopping experience now offers product comparisons directly in the conversation window. Users can refine by budget, features, and preferences, compare products side by side, and see current product information. OpenAI has also connected product data through the Agentic Commerce Protocol, with retailers including Target, Sephora, Nordstrom, Lowe's, Best Buy, The Home Depot, and Wayfair participating in product discovery.
Shopify product data is also integrated into ChatGPT, giving millions of Shopify merchants a route into product discovery without requiring each merchant to build a separate integration.
Sources: Adobe AI shopping research; Adobe Digital Trends 2026; OpenAI Product Discovery; OpenAI Shopping Research
How is ChatGPT changing search and website traffic?
ChatGPT is becoming a larger source of website referral traffic while also influencing discovery before users click through to a site.
ChatGPT referral traffic is growing, but it’s still a small share of total website traffic. One study showed a 206% increase in outbound ChatGPT referral traffic between January 2025 and January 2026.
Another 2026 benchmark found AI referrals accounted for 1.08% of total website traffic in its 10-industry dataset. ChatGPT generated 87.4% of those AI referrals. The share varies by industry, reaching 2.8% of total traffic for IT sites and 1.9% for Consumer Staples.
ChatGPT also doesn't use web search for every query. Semrush found search was enabled on 34.5% of ChatGPT queries in February 2026, down from 46% in late 2024.
The clicks that do leave ChatGPT are heavily concentrated. Google received 21.6% of outbound ChatGPT referrals in Semrush's data, while the next nine domains combined received another 8.6%. More than 30% of outbound referral traffic therefore went to just 10 domains.
Sources: Semrush ChatGPT traffic analysis; Conductor AEO/GEO Benchmarks
Does AI referral traffic convert?
Yes. AI referral traffic can convert at a higher rate than non-AI traffic, particularly for retail websites.
AI-referred retail traffic converted 60% better than non-AI traffic in a July 2026 US retail data report. Those visitors also spent 59% longer on site, were 33% less likely to bounce, and added products to cart at a 28% higher rate.
AI referral volume is growing. Adobe found AI traffic to US retail sites increased 62% year over year in July 2026 and had risen 1,219% since October 2024.
The conversion pattern has also reversed. In March 2025, Adobe measured AI-referred retail traffic converting 38% below non-AI traffic. By March 2026 it was 42% higher, and by July 2026 the gap had widened to 60%. July marked the 11th consecutive month in which AI-referred retail conversion was ahead.
The data suggests AI-referred shoppers are arriving later in the funnel. They have often already used an AI tool to break down options or compare products before reaching the retailer, which explains the higher conversion and engagement figures.
Source: Adobe Digital Insights
ChatGPT in marketing and business
AI is now part of normal marketing operations, with teams using it for content, media, advertising, admin, planning and research. ChatGPT leads the B2B tool-preference data used below, but adoption is well beyond any single platform.
The business side has also moved from individual experimentation into paid company deployments. The data below separates how marketers use AI, where teams are increasing investment, and how ChatGPT is being adopted inside businesses.
How are marketers using AI?
Marketers use AI most often for content and media creation, but also for advertising, admin, planning, and forecasting.
Content creation is still the most common marketing use case in HubSpot's 2026 survey. 42.5% of marketers said they use AI extensively for content creation and another 38% use it occasionally.
Media creation is close behind, with 37.2% using AI extensively and 37.7% occasionally. Advertising automation and optimization is used extensively by 34.1% of marketers, while 35.6% use AI extensively for administrative task automation and 33.4% for strategic planning and forecasting.
The survey also found 26.5% of marketers say AI has increased productivity, while 66.2% report a slight or moderate increase.
Source: HubSpot State of Marketing 2026
How do B2B marketers use ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is being used by B2B marketers for content creation, research, personalization, market intelligence, and automating repetitive tasks. In a 2026 survey of more than 300 B2B marketers, 57% named ChatGPT as their go-to AI tool, compared with 29% for Gemini, 5% for Perplexity, and 3% for Claude.
The biggest reported benefit was efficiency. 45% said AI was making their marketing more efficient, while 23% said it was helping them create more personalized content. Another 24% said AI was replacing some manual tasks while increasing the need for new skills.
ChatGPT adoption is even higher when looking at B2B go-to-market teams. 91% of B2B GTM leaders said they use general-purpose AI tools such as ChatGPT, while 56% have also deployed custom GPTs. AI agents and prototyping tools were each being used by 41%, although only 21% had moved as far as multi-agent systems.
The most common areas where B2B teams reported getting results from AI were outbound, market intelligence, and content marketing. That includes account targeting, competitor research, data enrichment, SEO and AEO content, GTM documentation, and personalized messaging. ChatGPT was also rated the most impactful GTM tool in the same research, receiving more write-in mentions than HubSpot or Clay.
Adoption is still running ahead of positive results. 53% of B2B GTM leaders said AI was having either no impact or only limited impact on their GTM performance. That gap suggests teams are using ChatGPT heavily, but many are still working out which workflows produce more than basic time savings.
Sources: B2B Marketing, 2026 B2B Trends Research Report; Growth Unhinged, 2025 State of B2B GTM Report
How are marketers and businesses investing in AI?
Marketing teams and businesses are investing in AI through larger budgets, dedicated leadership, specialist roles, and team expansion.
AI investment has gone from small software subscriptions to larger budgets, dedicated leadership, specialist roles, and team expansion. In 2026, CMOs are allocating an average of 15.3% of their marketing budgets to AI initiatives. Marketing organizations with more developed AI capabilities are investing even more, at 21.3% of their total marketing budgets.
That investment is happening even though marketing budgets are tight. The average marketing budget is 7.8% of company revenue in 2026, while 56% of CMOs say they don't have enough budget to deliver their strategy. AI is therefore taking a larger share of existing marketing spend rather than being funded by larger overall budgets.
Businesses are making the same decision outside marketing. 85% of functional leaders plan to increase AI spending in 2026, after organizations allocated an average of 12% of functional budgets to AI in 2025. Only 22% have successfully scaled AI into multiple business units, so investment is still running ahead of deployment in many companies.
Companies are also putting more money into people. The share of marketing budgets allocated to labor increased from 21.9% in 2025 to 24.5% in 2026, despite expectations that AI would reduce staffing costs. A lack of internal AI expertise and talent is now the biggest barrier to AI-driven marketing efficiency, reported by 38% of CMOs.
Technology teams are expanding for the same reason. Nearly 70% of tech leaders plan to grow their teams in response to generative AI, while the average share of technology budgets allocated to AI is expected to increase from 8% to 13% over two years. AI architect roles are expected to increase from 30% of organizations to 58%.
Dedicated AI leadership is becoming more common too. 76% of surveyed organizations now have a Chief AI Officer, up from 26% in 2025. Among organizations with high AI maturity, 91% have appointed a dedicated AI leader, and almost 60% have centralized areas such as AI strategy, governance, data, and infrastructure.
The investment is therefore spreading into three areas: technology, people, and organizational structure. Businesses are buying AI tools, increasing AI budgets, hiring or retraining teams, and creating dedicated leadership positions to manage how those investments are deployed.
Sources: Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey; Gartner 2026 AI Investment Survey; Gartner AI Maturity research; Deloitte Tech Trends 2026; IBM Institute for Business Value
How is ChatGPT used in businesses?
Businesses use ChatGPT through paid team and enterprise deployments for employee tasks, recurring workflows, Custom GPTs, and Projects.
More than 9 million paying business users rely on ChatGPT, according to OpenAI. OpenAI also says more than two million business customers now use its products.
Paying business users are individual paid users or seats, while business customers are organizations using OpenAI products.
The scale has grown rapidly. OpenAI reported more than seven million ChatGPT for Work seats in late 2025, up 40% in two months, while ChatGPT Enterprise seats had grown ninefold year over year.
Usage inside enterprise accounts is also becoming more intensive. Weekly Enterprise messages grew around 8x from November 2024, while the average worker sent 30% more messages.
Custom GPTs and Projects are becoming part of repeatable company workflows. Weekly users of Custom GPTs and Projects increased around 19x year to date, and roughly 20% of all Enterprise messages were processed through a Custom GPT or Project.
Sources: OpenAI business data; OpenAI business customer milestone; OpenAI State of Enterprise AI
What productivity and ROI are businesses getting from AI?
Businesses are reporting AI returns through higher productivity, faster marketing output, and positive financial ROI.
Businesses are starting to report positive returns from AI in productivity, revenue, and marketing output. In an enterprise survey, 74% of executives said their organizations were achieving ROI from AI within the first year.
Productivity gains can be high once AI is used regularly. Among organizations reporting productivity improvements, 39% said productivity had at least doubled. Separate workplace research found daily AI users were 64% more likely to report very good productivity and 58% more likely to report very good focus than employees who weren't using AI.
Marketing teams are seeing production gains too. Businesses using AI for marketing reported 46% faster content creation and 32% faster content editing, reducing the time required to produce and update campaign assets.
Among organizations using generative AI in production and reporting revenue growth, 86% estimated that AI had increased annual company revenue by at least 6%.
The results aren't the same for every company or AI project, though. Deloitte found that nearly three-quarters of organizations said their most advanced generative AI initiative was meeting or exceeding ROI expectations, while many experiments were still failing to move into full-scale deployment.
Sources: Google Cloud, ROI of AI 2025; Slack Workforce Index; Deloitte, State of Generative AI in the Enterprise
How is ChatGPT changing marketing roles?
ChatGPT is expanding marketing roles into research, analysis, and technical tasks, while marketing tasks are also being performed by people in other roles.
OpenAI's 2026 workplace analysis found marketers use ChatGPT for tasks outside their own occupation more than many other professional groups. 24.3% of marketers' messages involved tasks associated with other occupations.
Marketing tasks also made up 8.9% of messages among workers in other occupations, the highest outward share in OpenAI's sample.
That suggests ChatGPT is being used to blur some of the boundaries between marketing, analysis, research, technical work, and other functions rather than speeding up existing marketing tasks.
In the wider sample, 16.8% of all work-related messages and 43.5% of occupation-specific messages involved tasks associated with another occupation. Task crossover was also higher in smaller teams: 18.9% of messages in workspaces with 2–5 seats involved outside-occupation tasks, compared with 16.3% in workspaces with more than 100 seats.
Source: OpenAI workplace task analysis
ChatGPT Ads and commercial growth
Advertising added another revenue stream to ChatGPT in 2026 on top of consumer subscriptions, enterprise plans and API usage. OpenAI has positioned ads as a way to support free access while keeping paid placements separate from organic answers.
How big is the ChatGPT Ads business?
ChatGPT Ads reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate less than 200 days after launch, according to OpenAI.
OpenAI also reported tens of thousands of advertisers using ChatGPT Ads, with Ads Manager available in more than 40 countries.
The $1 billion figure describes the platform's annualized revenue pace. It doesn't tell advertisers whether ChatGPT Ads will outperform search or social on ROAS, CPA, or another campaign metric.
Source: OpenAI
How much revenue does OpenAI generate from ChatGPT?
OpenAI now generates tens of billions of dollars in annualized revenue, with consumer ChatGPT, enterprise products, API usage, and advertising all contributing.
OpenAI’s annualized revenue passed $20 billion in 2025, up from around $6 billion in 2024. ChatGPT subscriptions remain a major part of that revenue, alongside enterprise products, API usage and, since 2026, advertising.
Business revenue is also taking a much larger share. By April 2026, enterprise products accounted for more than 40% of OpenAI revenue. By September, enterprise and consumer revenue had reached roughly equal levels, earlier than the company had previously expected.
Enterprise revenue was still accelerating during 2026. It increased 32% between June and July alone, compared with a 20% increase in OpenAI’s overall annualized revenue during the same period.
ChatGPT Ads adds another revenue stream on top of those subscriptions and enterprise products. Its $1 billion annualized run rate therefore represents only one part of the commercial business behind ChatGPT.
What return are advertisers getting from ChatGPT Ads?
Early ChatGPT Ads case studies report positive advertiser returns, including higher ROAS and lower acquisition costs in several campaigns.
Developer platform Stream reported around 2x return on ad spend from a ChatGPT Ads campaign. More than 70% of ad clicks became website sessions, compared with less than 10% from the other channels included in the same test.
Language-learning company Talkpal reported 26% higher ROAS from ChatGPT Ads than an established native advertising channel it had used for more than a year. Its cost per trial activation was also 51% lower, and ChatGPT Ads became one of its top three acquisition channels by new trials within two months.
Home-services marketplace Angi has also reported improving returns as it increased its use of ChatGPT Ads. Its ROAS increased by more than 38% between Q2 and Q3 2026, while its cost per lead fell 34% after it introduced conversion-optimized campaigns.
These are early advertiser results rather than a benchmark for every campaign, but they provide the first evidence of how ChatGPT Ads is performing past impressions and clicks.
Sources: OpenAI ChatGPT Ads customer case studies: Stream; Talkpal; Angi
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