Weiquan Lin/Getty
Artificial intelligence (AI) has reached a tipping point. People have adopted AI at an unprecedented scale, with almost two billion users worldwide, according to an estimate by the US venture capital firm Menlo Ventures.
Also: ChatGPT was downloaded 30 million times last month - but its user base data is more shocking
And yet, very little money is being made, perhaps only $12 billion annually, with most of that figure accounted for by OpenAI.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
The difference between the enormous number of users and the small amount being earned constitutes "one of the largest and fastest-emerging monetization gaps in recent consumer tech history," said Menlo Ventures.
Menlo Ventures
The report, "2025: The state of consumer AI," written by Shawn Carolan, Amy Wu, C.C. Gong, Sam Borja, with unspecified help from Anthropic's Claude Sonnet large language model, is based on a survey conducted in the US in April for Menlo Ventures by the firm Morning Consult, with the participation of 5,031 US adults.
Also: AI usage is stalling out at work from lack of education and support
The survey found that 61% of US adults had used AI in the prior six months, and "nearly one in five rely on it every day."
... continue reading