Source: Reuters
ChatGPT's dominance is cooling. A 62% year-over-year growth rate signals maturation in a market now split between incumbents and challengers, not the explosive expansion that defined 2023. Claude's 640% surge to 56M monthly active users represents genuine competitive pressure in the generative AI layer, with Anthropic capturing users who switch for perceived safety, reasoning quality, or anti-corporate positioning. The consumer AI market is fragmenting faster than most enterprise software categories. Usage concentration won't protect any single player from feature parity and switching costs approaching zero.