The Top 100 Consumer AI Apps: Who’s Actually Paying?

Elena Burger (0:00)

The most interesting big new trend is in personal agents.

Josh Elman (0:04)

We're in this world where we're so excited by what ChatGPT did with turning things into conversation, and now these agents we can get in our messaging apps to turn them into more conversation. It's an incredible paradigm.

Olivia Moore (0:14)

About half of Americans report using AI.

Around four and a half percent of US consumers are paying a subscription to an AI product. The top one percent user is spending $903 per month personally on their personal credit cards on AI.

Josh Elman (0:31)

The reality is people are now building software. They're building these really rich products. They may be using their agents to write some of that code, but when they're delivering this whole experience to a user, it is much more than just a shim on the model.

Elena Burger (0:43)

The run rate that OpenAI has reached through advertising, what does that tell us?

Olivia Moore (0:47)

That would previously take a company years and years and years to get to, even after launching an ads product. What I'm fascinated to see in terms of the evolution of the ads product is...

SPEAKER_4 (1:00)

Half of Americans now report using AI, but only a small fraction are actually paying for it. And the people who do are spending a lot. In this episode, a16z's Elena Burger sits down with partners Olivia Moore and Josh Elman to unpack the seventh edition of our Top 100 Consumer AI Ads Report.

For the first time, the report includes consumer spending data, revealing a very different picture from traffic alone. The biggest spenders are developers, creators and other power users, with the top 1% spending more than $900 a month on AI tools. They also get into the rise of personal agents, how ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are diverging, why advertising could unlock new consumer AI business models, and the categories that remain surprisingly wide open, from shopping and entertainment to social and dating.

Elena Burger (1:51)

Welcome to the a16z podcast. I'm Elena Burger, and I'm joined by Olivia Moore, who's the author of our ongoing Top 100 Consumer AI Apps report, and Josh Elman on our consumer team.

Today, we're digging into the seventh edition of this report, who's paying for AI, why the big assistance are heading in different directions, and whether personal agents can turn everyday errands into the next big consumer business. Team, thanks so much for joining.

Josh Elman (2:19)

Thanks so much for having us.

Elena Burger (2:20)

Olivia, let's just get right into it. I would love to hear your top takeaways from this report.

Olivia Moore (2:26)

Yeah. This is the seventh time we've done this list. The very first time we only ranked all global websites that were AI native by just traffic like hits on the website. That worked then because the way that almost everyone was using AI was like a prompt box product in a browser. We've had to evolve that a lot over the last few years as AI expands. This list is our most expansive yet. We added revenue data for the first time, so we worked with the a bit data to get specifically consumer card spend data, so not accounting for enterprises or SMBs.

We ranked products by what consumers are actually paying for.

I think for me, the biggest takeaways from this report is on a traffic basis. It looks like a lot of these products are settling. We only had 11 new products across the web and mobile lists combined, which is the least we've had in any of the prior editions of the series. But the spend data really introduced a lot of new variables because of those 50 that ranked for spend, 29 of them were not on either traffic list. That also, I think, works towards or connects into the other big conclusion of the report, which is just how much of a power user game consumer AI is right now.

Elena Burger (3:37)

Yeah. That's something that's funny. We also recently released our state of markets and something that Sarah Wang actually commented directly on is she said, hey, there's such a power law game happening now. It's happening at the enterprise level and it's happening at the consumer level.

So one thing that's probably notable is, yeah, we have the fewest number of newcomers on this list, and it seems like the space is ossifying. But I think the past few months, things have actually been picking up a little bit more. I think the most interesting big new trend is in personal agents. So what are you seeing? What are the big shifts that are happening?

Olivia Moore (4:15)