ChatGPT's Revenue is Growing but Growth is Slowing Down

The official ChatGPT app from OpenAI has been on the App Store since May and Google Play since July. And even though it's late to the game it created, the app's revenue has been growing double-digit month over month.

September managed to break two records for the app's revenue. Only one is good, though.

15.6M people downloaded OpenAI's ChatGPT app in September, according to our estimates. That's more people than the populations of Sweden and Denmark combined!

That's also ChatGPT's highest month of downloads so far, and revenue is following a similar trend.

Our estimates show ChatGPT earned $3.2M in September from the App Store and Google Play. And that's net which means what OpenAI gets to keep after Apple and Google take their fees.

The majority of this haul, $3M, came from iPhone users and the rest from Google Play. Not much of a surprise there.

So far, The US is ChatGPT's biggest consumer, contributing roughly 60% of the app's lifetime earnings.

That's the good news. The bad news is that growth seems to be slowing down.

Although September broke a record in absolute terms, the rate at which revenue grew is actually the lowest to date at just 20%. Don't get me wrong, 20% is amazing, especially when we're looking at millions, but it's lower than the previous months which were in the 30s.

I started with the downloads to show how big the opportunity is here, and even though the paid subscription is on the higher end of subscription costs, it's the lack of upsell that's resulting in growth slowing down.

With a few small tweaks OpenAI can easily increase that conversion rate and see much faster revenue growth.

Maybe this revenue is too small in the grand scheme of things. After all, running ChatGPT and the crazy amount of GPU power it requires is more expensive than what they're making here.

But... wouldn't you want to make more money with something you already have running by only tweaking a few little things?

I hope the answer is yes.