OpenAI‘s ChatGPT has misplaced its majority share of the worldwide AI assistant marketplace for the primary time, experiences analytics agency Sensor Tower. The agency publised its State of AI Report 2026 which revealed that ChatGPT managed greater than half of the AI assistant market till January 2026. By the top of Could, its share had declined to 46.4%. This comes as rivals reminiscent of Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude and Elon Musk-backed Grok continued to draw customers. The report mentioned OpenAI’s chatbot nonetheless has over 1.1 billion month-to-month energetic customers, making it the most well-liked AI assistant available in the market.
Gemini emerges as ChatGPT’s greatest challenger
Google’s Gemini has been the most important beneficiary of the altering market. As per Sensor Tower report, Gemini now holds 27.7% of the AI assistant market, making it the second-largest AI chatbot platform worldwide. The expansion has largely been pushed by Gemini’s integration throughout Google’s ecosystem of services – Google Search, Gmail, Android and Workspace, serving to the platform acquire traction. With 662 million month-to-month customers, Gemini has established itself as OpenAI’s closest rival.Anthropic’s Claude can also be taking customers away from ChatGPT. The report discovered that Claude’s market share reached 10.3%, whereas its month-to-month person base grew to 245 million. Claude can also be main in paid subscriptions. In response to the report, 13% of Anthropic’s customers pay for premium plans, the very best conversion fee amongst main AI assistant platforms.
Grok, Perplexity, DeepSeek and Meta AI proceed to develop
Whereas Gemini and Claude account for many of the shift in market share, different AI assistants are additionally increasing their person bases. Sensor Tower mentioned Grok, Perplexity, DeepSeek and Meta AI every maintain lower than 5% of the market. Nevertheless, collectively they’re contributing to a extra aggressive AI panorama.Sensor Tower estimates that customers will obtain practically 2.3 billion AI apps within the first half of 2026. Shopper spending on AI apps is anticipated to exceed $4.2 billion throughout the identical interval, greater than double the $1.83 billion recorded a 12 months earlier. The report additionally estimates that point spent on AI apps will enhance from 17.2 billion hours within the first half of 2025 to about 36 billion hours within the first half of 2026.