ChatGPT loses its throne: Gemini exceeds 21% market share
ChatGPT's market share of web traffic has fallen from 86.7% to 64.5% in a year, while Google Gemini has surpassed the 21% mark for the first time. The era of one player dominating the AI chatbot market is coming to an end.
The era of one king is ending
In January 2025, ChatGPT still dominated almost the entire generative artificial intelligence market — according to analytics firm Similarweb, it accounted for 86.7 per cent of global visits to chatbot sites on desktops. Twelve months later, in January 2026, this share had fallen to 64.5 per cent. A loss of more than 22 percentage points in a single year is a sign that the AI chatbot market is undergoing fundamental change.
Gemini as the main challenger
The biggest winner in the market redistribution is Google Gemini. Over the same period, its share grew from 5.7 to 21.5 per cent — an increase of almost 280 per cent. In January 2026, Gemini surpassed the symbolic 20 per cent mark for the first time and reached two billion monthly visits, according to Search Engine Journal, based on data from Similarweb.
The reasons are clear: Google has aggressively integrated Gemini into its ecosystem — from Android to Gmail to search. As the technological gap between the models narrowed, users began to prioritise convenience and accessibility over marginal differences in quality.
Grok and other players on the rise
ChatGPT and Gemini are not alone on the market. Elon Musk's Grok jumped from virtually zero to 3.4 per cent of web traffic in a year and reached 15.2 per cent in mobile apps in the US, according to Reuters, as cited by Fortune magazine. Grok also surpassed Perplexity, which had previously led among smaller competitors.
China's DeepSeek holds 3.7 per cent, while Anthropic's Claude and the Perplexity search engine both have around two per cent. In the enterprise segment, however, the balance of power is different — according to a Menlo Ventures survey, Anthropic controls roughly a third of the enterprise market, ahead of OpenAI with 25 per cent.
What this means for users and businesses
Data from mobile applications show an even more dramatic shift. According to analytics firm Apptopia, ChatGPT's share in applications fell from 69.1 per cent to 45.3 per cent, while Gemini strengthened to 25.2 per cent. One in five AI chatbot users now regularly uses multiple apps, suggesting that the market is moving towards specialisation rather than universal dominance.
This has practical implications for Slovak developers and companies: dependence on a single AI service provider is becoming a risky strategy. At the same time, growing competition is pushing prices down and increasing quality — for example, traffic across the entire AI chatbot sector grew by 152 per cent in one year, reflecting the rapid expansion of the user base.
The end of monopoly, the beginning of competition
Analysts agree that the era of a single dominant player in generative AI is over. Trending Topics notes that ChatGPT has lost nearly 15 percentage points in the last six months alone. From now on, the decisive factors will be integration into existing platforms, pricing policy and the ability to address specific segments — from ordinary consumers to large enterprises. The artificial intelligence market is entering a phase of sustained competition.
