Artificial intelligence has revolutionized the mobile app landscape, with thousands of apps incorporating AI models to enhance user experiences. The top AI-powered apps have garnered valuations exceeding hundred billion dollars, making them a significant force in the industry.

Generative AI, specifically intelligent chatbots, AI-enabled search engines, and image creators, have been at the forefront of public attention since 2023. This surge in interest has prompted companies to invest heavily in AI innovation, driving growth and adoption across various sectors.

One notable example is OpenAI's GPT-powered chatbot ChatGPT, which launched in November 2022 and quickly gained 100 million users within 30 days. ChatGPT's capabilities extend beyond simple queries, allowing it to write computer programs, compose essays and music, generate business ideas, and translate text.

Microsoft's Bing AI also incorporated OpenAI's GPT-4 technology to improve search results, resulting in a significant surge in usage for the search engine.

While AI has shown tremendous potential, concerns surrounding errors and harmful content remain. Some experts warn about the possibility of chatbots being used to cheat on exams, create malware, and replace jobs.

Beyond these concerns, controversies have arisen around generative AI models scraping web images and videos to power image and video generation tools. OpenAI and other organizations have signed agreements with license holders worldwide to continue using their content in training underlying models.

Despite these warnings, hundreds of millions of people have adopted AI and use it frequently in their personal and professional lives. Several decacorn AI startups have developed apps generating text, photos, videos, and music.

Here are some key statistics on the AI app sector:

  • The AI app sector generated $4.5 billion in revenue in 2024, with ChatGPT accounting for more than half of this amount.
  • We estimate the AI app sector will surpass $150 billion in revenue by the end of the decade.
  • Close to 700 million people used AI apps in the first half of 2026.
  • ChatGPT was the most downloaded chatbot app in 2024, with 288 million downloads.
  • OpenAI is the most valuable AI startup, with a valuation of $300 billion.

Top AI Apps

| Link | App Name | Description |

|---|---|---|

| https://www.businessofapps.com/data/chatgpt-statistics/ | ChatGPT | OpenAI's chatbot is the most popular AI app in the world, with over 300 million active users |

| https://www.businessofapps.com/data/google-gemini-statistics/ | Google Gemini | Google's answer to ChatGPT, utilizing all of the powers of the most popular search engine |

| https://www.businessofapps.com/data/microsoft-copilot-statistics/ | Microsoft Copilot | Microsoft's chatbot, which runs on OpenAI's GPT model with Bing search results |

| https://www.businessofapps.com/data/deepseek-statistics/ | DeepSeek | The main chatbot competitor from China, which flipped the script with its cheap development cost |

| https://www.businessofapps.com/data/perplexity-ai-statistics/ | Perplexity | What some consider to be the next form of search, Perplexity blends chatbot with search engine |

| https://claude.ai/ | Claude | Another popular chatbot developed by Anthropic, seen as a key rival to OpenAI |

| https://x.ai/grok | Grok | The chatbot for users of microblogging app X, previously Twitter |

| https://www.businessofapps.com/data/character-ai-statistics/ | character.ai | A chatbot marketplace hosting hundreds of thousands of characters and celebrities |

| https://www.midjourney.com/home | Midjourney | One of the more advanced photo generators, which started as a tool on Discord |

| https://www.faceapp.com/ | FaceApp | One of the OG AI photo editing tools, letting users add effects and change features of their face |

| https://www.alexa.com/ | Alexa | Amazon's voice assistant embedded onto millions of Alexa smarthome devices |

| https://www.apple.com/uk/siri/ | Siri | Apple's voice assistant, embbeded into a lot of the apps and services on iOS |

AI App Market Landscape

The AI app market is experiencing unprecedented growth, with thousands of apps integrating AI models to enhance user experiences. At its core are large-language models, which power all chatbot and media generation services being adopted by hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

AI App Revenue

The AI app sector reached $4.5 billion in revenue in 2024 and is expected to reach $156.9 billion by 2030.