ChatGPT Crushing All Rivals in Chatbot Race

There’s a big reason that ChatGPT has become practically synonymous with the term “chatbot” itself. Or, more precisely, 900 million reasons.

That’s the number of times ChatGPT has been downloaded onto devices, according to new Sensor Tower data on chatbot downloads seen by Bloomberg last week. That makes OpenAI far and away the clubhouse leader in the category, outpacing its rivals by orders of magnitude. That’s a big, big problem for Microsoft, which once thought it owned said clubhouse.

On the Download

Google’s Gemini is the class runner-up, with just 200 million downloads so far. Meanwhile, DeepSeek has scored just 127 million downloads, dropping from No. 1 on Apple’s App Store after debuting earlier this year to disappearing from the Top 100 Free Apps rankings entirely; ChatGPT is currently in the top spot. Microsoft’s Copilot has seen a mere 79 million downloads, while start-up Perplexity has seen just 47 million.

And with 540 million monthly active users, per Sensor Tower, there’s reason to believe ChatGPT may just become the beneficiary of a winner-takes-(nearly)-all internet economy a la Google in search, YouTube in video, or Amazon in e-commerce. 

Again, it’s a tough development for Microsoft, trapped in a protracted breakup with the startup it helped foster. Worse news? OpenAI last week debuted new tools that challenge Microsoft’s AI offerings even more directly:

• On Thursday, OpenAI announced new agentic features for ChatGPT, allowing it to navigate the web and interact with a user’s calendar and other applications. That makes it a little more of a direct rival to Microsoft’s Copilot, which, as its name suggests, has a more holistic presence on a user’s device than a regular chatbot.
• Most pertinently and likely concerning, for Microsoft, however, is that the ChatGPT agent can create slideshows and presentations compatible with Microsoft’s PowerPoint and Excel software.

Earth to Enterprise: The new features turn up the heat on Microsoft’s vast enterprise business, where it hoped to take an AI lead even as it fades on the consumer side of the equation. Still, it’s already in a knife fight with OpenAI over corporate clients. In one instance recently reported by Bloomberg, drugmaker Amgen pivoted from Microsoft’s enterprise AI tools to OpenAI’s, mainly at the behest of its 20,000 employees who found the latter more useful. Next up on OpenAI’s Big Tech menu? Possibly Google. According to a recent Reuters report, OpenAI is also preparing to launch an AI-powered browser in a direct challenge to Google’s Chrome business.