A16z’s seventh Top 100 Consumer AI Apps list follows the money

Andreessen Horowitz has published the seventh edition of its Top 100 Consumer AI Apps ranking. ChatGPT is still at the top, and it isn’t close. The bigger change is in the methodology. For the first time, a16z added US consumer credit-card spending data to its usual traffic metrics, and the results reshape how the AI subscription market looks. A market carried by a small group of heavy spenders The headline number is easy to miss. According to the report, only 4.5% of US consumers pay for any AI subscription. Spending within that paying group is extremely uneven. The top 1% of spenders average about $903 per month on AI subscriptions. The median paying user spends $25. a16z describes this as a power-user economy. A small number of customers account for a large share of revenue, while most people use free tiers or nothing at all. ChatGPT on top, Claude moving up ChatGPT leads in both usage and revenue. In a16z’s US panel, it has roughly three times as many paid subscribers as either Gemini or Claude. The more competitive race is for second place. Claude, Anthropic’s assistant, ranks as the third most popular consumer AI app overall. On US paid subscribers, though, the report finds i...