ChatGPT’s mobile app revenue saw its biggest spike yet following GPT-4o launch

Consumer demand for the latest AI technology is heating up. The launch of OpenAI’s latest flagship model, GPT-4o, has now driven the company’s biggest-ever spike in revenue on mobile, despite the model being freely available on the web. GPT-4o, which launched May 13, can handle text, speech and video, and delivers real-time responsiveness and a range of emotive voice options, making it a far more powerful model than what was offered before. This technical innovation is also pushing more users to upgrade to OpenAI’s paid subscription, according to new data from app intelligence firm Appfigures.

Though OpenAI said GPT-4o would be offered to users on its free tier, that promise didn’t stretch to include users of its ChatGPT app on mobile. Instead, mobile users are being pushed to upgrade to its $19.99 monthly subscription, ChatGPT Plus, if they want to experiment with OpenAI’s most recent launch.

That strategic decision is generating increased demand for subscriptions among mobile users and has now led to the biggest-ever revenue spike OpenAI has yet seen on mobile devices.

The ChatGPT mobile app’s net revenue first jumped 22% on the day of the GPT-4o launch and continued to grow in the following days, according to Appfigures. On Tuesday, net revenue was up to $900,000, nearly twice that of the app’s daily average of $491,000. (The net revenue figure is calculated after Apple and Google take their commission.)

Before this, ChatGPT’s second-biggest spike was in April, but it was much smaller: merely an abnormally high revenue day, not a massive jump.

The ChatGPT mobile app earned $4.2 million in net revenue across both the App Store and Google Play from May 13 to 17, the firm found, which represents the largest revenue spike the app has seen to date. The jump in revenue indicates there’s real consumer demand for trying out the latest experiments in AI, particularly on mobile, even if it’s more expensive than a Netflix subscription.

Apple’s App Store contributed the majority of the new revenue, at 81%, and the U.S. was the top market, accounting for $1.8 million in revenue. Other top countries included Germany ($282,000), the U.K. ($212,000), Japan ($210,000), France ($147,000), Canada ($134,000), Korea ($123,000), Brazil ($117,000), Australia ($102,000) and Turkey ($89,000).

What’s more, the revenue trend does not yet appear to be slowing down, and in fact, may be sustaining or even increasing, the data indicates. Stay tuned.