Market Share Milestone
For the first time since its launch, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has seen its share of the AI assistant market fall below 50%. According to analytics firm Sensor Tower’s 2026 State of AI Report, ChatGPT’s market share dropped to 46.4% by the end of May, down from over 50% in January. The decline comes as competitors like Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude gain significant ground, capturing 27.7% and 10.3% of the market respectively. Despite this shift, ChatGPT remains the most popular AI assistant globally with over 1.1 billion monthly users, followed by Gemini with 662 million and Claude with 245 million.
User Behavior and Competitive Dynamics
The report highlights a growing willingness among users to switch between different AI assistants. Specific events appear to accelerate this migration. For instance, OpenAI’s deal with the U.S. Department of Defense in February triggered a measurable spike in uninstalls, suggesting that brand trust and values alignment matter to users as much as features. Gemini’s momentum is largely attributed to its deep integration with Google’s broader ecosystem of tools, while Claude has built a strong reputation for productivity use cases and is closing in on ChatGPT’s user retention rate. The overall market continues to expand rapidly, with Sensor Tower estimating that people are on pace to download nearly 2.3 billion AI apps and spend over $2.2 billion in the first half of 2026, more than double the $5.83 billion spent in the same period in 2025.
Source: TechCrunch
