ChatGPT Hits 1.2 Billion Weekly Users, and OpenAI Puts Its Search Volume at 20% of Google’s
OpenAI’s consumer product lead says ChatGPT added 200 million weekly users in about 60 days. The search comparison is OpenAI’s own, unpublished estimate.
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ChatGPT has grown from 1 billion to 1.2 billion weekly active users in about 60 days, OpenAI says. The company also estimates that ChatGPT’s volume of search-like queries is about one-fifth of Google’s.
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At a glance (all per OpenAI)
| Weekly active users | 1.2 billion, up from 1 billion in about 60 days |
| Search-like queries | About one-fifth of Google’s volume (OpenAI estimate) |
| Images created | 1.5 billion per week |
| Voice mode | 250 million combined weekly active users |
| Product change | Chat and Work modes to merge |
Where the numbers come from
The figures come from Adam Fry, ChatGPT’s consumer product lead. He shared them with Alex Kantrowitz of Big Technology during a fireside chat at an OpenAI-hosted dinner in New York on Monday, November 2, and Big Technology published the interview on November 3. Each figure below is OpenAI’s own and has not been independently verified.
User growth
Fry said ChatGPT went from 1 billion to 1.2 billion weekly active users in about two months, which works out to about 100 million users every 30 days. “The growth is just going big,” he said.
The search comparison
The headline claim is about search. “ChatGPT’s volume of search-like queries is now roughly one-fifth the volume of queries of Google,” Fry said.
That figure is an OpenAI estimate. The company has not published how it was calculated. Kantrowitz asked what counts as a search, for example whether each prompt in a long conversation is a query. That question is not fully answered in the free portion of the interview.
For scale, Kantrowitz noted that Bing’s share of the search market is around 5%.
Fry also described what search-like use looks like. People now look up people, places and things on ChatGPT, he said, and ask finance and health questions where they want up-to-date, factual information. In his words, it is anything a user would traditionally have taken to a search engine.
Images and voice
According to OpenAI, ChatGPT users create 1.5 billion images per week. Voice mode, which covers both dictation and speaking with ChatGPT, has 250 million combined weekly active users.
Chat and Work merging
Fry also said OpenAI plans to merge ChatGPT’s Chat and Work modes. Users currently switch between them with a toggle at the top of the app, and the merger would remove that choice.
Why the caveats matter
All of these are company-reported numbers, shared in an interview rather than a filing or published dataset. The weekly-user figures describe growth, and the search figure is a comparison. Without a methodology, readers cannot tell how OpenAI defined a search-like query or which Google figure it compared against. The user growth and the search comparison are separate claims, and both should be read as OpenAI’s own account of its business until outside data confirms them.
What to watch
Whether OpenAI publishes a methodology for its search comparison, whether Google responds, and when the merged Chat and Work experience reaches users.
More coverage is on our Artificial Intelligence hub.
How we reported this
We read the free portion of Big Technology’s interview. Every figure is OpenAI’s own, as stated by Fry. Independent measurements of the search comparison and anything behind the paywall were left out.
Published and fact-checked November 4, 2026.
Sources
DailyMech used AI tools to help research and draft this article; it was fact-checked by our editors.