Chinese AI chatbot Deepseek is gaining traction with users, though it remains well behind market leader ChatGPT. Meanwhile, OpenAI continues to report strong growth in both users and revenue.
Data from Similarweb shows Deepseek's website reaching 6.2 million daily visits on January 24 - up significantly from around 300,000 visitors in December 2024. The company's Android app logged 1.64 million active users that same day, while also climbing to the top spot in Apple's App Store.
According to Similarweb's data, Deepseek has now pulled ahead of competitors Perplexity and Claude in website traffic and is gaining ground on Google's Gemini. However, the Gemini comparison doesn't tell the whole story, since most users likely access Google's AI assistant through their phones.
Even with this growth, Deepseek trails far behind ChatGPT. Similarweb data shows ChatGPT reaching 117.5 million website visits that same day - 19 times more than Deepseek. The gap widens even further on mobile, where ChatGPT has about 50 times more daily active users.
ChatGPT is still growing strong
According to The Information's sources in investment circles, ChatGPT's paid subscribers jumped from 5.8 to 15.5 million in 2024. This translates to projected annual revenue of at least $4 billion, or $333 million monthly, by year's end.
Only about 5% of ChatGPT's weekly active users currently pay for the service. With 350 million weekly active users - up from 110 million in early 2024 - OpenAI has room to grow if it can convert more free users to paying customers.
The company recently launched ChatGPT Pro at $200 monthly, expected to bring in $300 million annually. The Information reports that API services add at least another billion in yearly revenue.
In addition, OpenAI is reportedly working to reduce Microsoft's 20% revenue share and is talking to Softbank about $40 billion in new funding at a valuation of $260-300 billion, up from $157 billion today.
The company expects to raise ChatGPT prices, introduce usage-based fees and premium offerings as AI becomes more capable of handling everyday work tasks. Internal discussions mention potential prices up to $2,000 monthly.
