ChatGPT's Revenue Thrives in the Face of Free Opposition from DeepSeek
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - Apple's Latest Sherlock. Check out the full article for more insights.
The last few weeks have been pretty weird in the AI world. DeepSeek, a Chinese company, released a model that goes head-to-head with OpenAI's, and made it open source.
Then, DeepSeek released a consumer app that's free and demand exploded almost entirely overnight. With users raving about the quality and (lack of) price, it felt like ChatGPT's soaring success might face opposition.
But.. it didn't.
Between controversies and server instability, DeepSeek's control of the market faded quickly and the introduction of o3-mini combined with ChatGPT's $200 tier drove the app's revenue higher than ever before.
If you've been following me for the last few months or read our latest AI Industry report, you know that ChatGPT's revenue has been growing at a very fast pace since the introduction of 4o last year.
According to our App Intelligence, ChatGPT's net revenue rose a whopping 22% in January to $67M - that's what Sam gets to keep after giving Apple and Google their share.
DeepSeek came in mid-January which some may think means February will not be as positive. Data from the first week of the month puts these concerns to rest.
According to Appfigures estimates, ChatGPT hit a new all-time high for daily revenue in mid-January and then broke that record with an even higher day last week.
The first two weeks of the year were big for ChatGPT's revenue, a direct result of the Pro tier which costs 10x the standard tier. That resulted in an all-time high of $2.59M of net revenue on January 17th.
Actually, almost every single day during the first two weeks was a record breaker.
News about DeepSeek certainly hurt though. The second half of January wasn't nearly as high, though, still higher than the average for December.
Between subscription renewals, new subscribers, and o3-mini, ChatGPT returned the recording-busting performance we expect in February, with its latest all-time high at $2.63M last Friday.
In terms of apps, AI feels now like streaming apps felt in 2020. This race is just starting.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
