OpenAI officially announced that ChatGPT has reached 900 million weekly active users, placing the platform within striking distance of the elusive 1 billion user milestone.
The announcement highlights a staggering 350% increase in engagement over the last 18 months, as the tool has transitioned from a viral curiosity into a “daily digital utility” for a significant portion of the global population.
The Road to 1 Billion: User Growth Stats
OpenAI’s internal data shows that the momentum is actually accelerating rather than slowing down.
- Recent Surge: The user base grew by 100 million in just the four months since October 2025.
- Record Months: January and February 2026 are on track to be the largest months for new sign-ups in the company’s history.
- Daily Engagement: Users are now sending an estimated 2.5 billion prompts every day.
- Global Hubs: While the U.S. remains the largest market by traffic, India has emerged as the fastest-growing hub, recently crossing 100 million weekly active users on its own.
Monetization & Business Adoption
The surge in free users is being mirrored by a massive shift in paid and corporate adoption:
| Category | February 2026 Milestone |
| Consumer Paid (Plus/Max) | 50 Million+ subscribers (approx. 5.5% of total users). |
| Paying Business Users | 9 Million+ users (across Enterprise, Team, and Edu). |
| Codex (Coding Agent) | 1.6 Million weekly users (tripled since Jan 1, 2026). |
Why the Sudden Acceleration?
OpenAI attributes this “hockey stick” growth to several 2025–2026 product milestones:
- System-Level Integration: Deep integration with Apple’s Siri (iOS 26) and Android’s Gemini-OpenAI toggle has made ChatGPT the “default” brain for hundreds of millions of smartphone users.
- Multimodal “Agentic” Shift: The evolution of ChatGPT into an autonomous agent that can perform tasks (booking flights, managing emails, writing code) rather than just answering questions.
- Infrastructure Scaling: The new $110 billion funding round and partnerships with Amazon and Nvidia have allowed OpenAI to maintain high speeds and reliability even as the user load nearly quintupled.
The “Google Challenge”
Analysts note that ChatGPT’s 900 million weekly users now rival the engagement levels of established giants like Facebook and YouTube. Most importantly, it is fundamentally changing “discovery behavior”—roughly 31% of users now start their product research inside ChatGPT rather than a traditional search engine.
“ChatGPT is where people start with AI… as usage scales, the product improves in ways people feel immediately: faster responses, higher reliability, and stronger safety.” — OpenAI Blog Post, Feb 27, 2026
