ChatGPT has hit a new milestone of $3 billion in worldwide consumer spending on mobile as of this week, according to estimates from app intelligence provider Appfigures. This figure represents the total spending on iOS and Android devices since the app’s launch in May 2023, when it first arrived, then only on iOS.
What’s notable is that the bulk of that spending took place this year. Worldwide, consumers spent an estimated $2.48 billion in the ChatGPT mobile app in 2025, representing a 408% year-over-year increase from the $487 million spent in 2024. In 2023, the app’s first year of availability, it earned $42.9 million, before growing 1,036% to reach the 2024 figure.
These numbers represent a sharp rise in consumer adoption, compared with other popular apps. For instance, it took ChatGPT 31 months to reach $3 billion in consumer spending, but the top earner, TikTok, took 58 months to do so, Appfigures told TechCrunch.
ChatGPT also reached the milestone faster than top streaming apps like Disney+ and HBO Max, which hit the $3 billion figure in 42 months and 46 months, respectively.
xAI’s Grok, however, is seeing a similar revenue trajectory to ChatGPT, compared with other AI rivals.
Grok was released in late 2023 to X Premium Plus subscribers before becoming more broadly available last year. But if you compare the pace of consumer spending across AI apps, Grok came the closest to matching ChatGPT’s cumulative revenue at the same point, once it began monetizing. (You can see this on the chart below, which plots the AI apps’ spending aligned to when each app began monetizing.)
While the $3 billion in spending represents a significant uptake by consumers, it’s not the only way to measure AI app adoption or potential long-term revenue.
ChatGPT’s mobile customers are buying paid subscriptions, like the $20 per month ChatGPT Plus or the $200 per month ChatGPT Pro for advanced users. But AI apps can generate revenue in other ways, including through developer offerings and, perhaps soon for ChatGPT, ads. In addition, ChatGPT on Wednesday launched its own app store of sorts, which the company suggests will be monetized in some way in the future, its blog post noted.
Google, meanwhile, is exploring the potential to transition its healthy search ads business to AI-powered search, placing ads in AI Mode, AI Overviews, AI shopping, and an increasingly AI-powered Discover page, among other things.
Anthropic is aiming at the business market and is reportedly on track for $70 billion in revenue by 2028.
