THE ESSENTIALS IN 30 SECONDS

  • Adam Fry, who leads ChatGPT's consumer product, said at an OpenAI dinner in New York that ChatGPT's search-like queries amount to about 20% of Google's volume.
  • He said weekly users rose from 1 billion to 1.2 billion in 60 days, and cited 1.5 billion images a week and 250 million weekly voice and dictation users.
  • OpenAI has not explained how it measured Google's volume or which queries count as searches; all figures are unaudited company claims.

OpenAI is presenting ChatGPT as a growing rival to Google in search. Speaking in a short fireside chat at an OpenAI-hosted dinner in New York on Monday, November 2, Adam Fry, who leads ChatGPT's consumer product, said the volume of search-like queries on ChatGPT is now roughly one-fifth of Google's. The conversation was published by Alex Kantrowitz's newsletter Big Technology.

The figures OpenAI shared

Fry also said ChatGPT's weekly active users grew from 1 billion to 1.2 billion in about 60 days. Other numbers he gave include 1.5 billion images generated each week and 250 million weekly users of voice features, a figure that combines dictation and voice mode. He said paid subscriptions passed 50 million several months ago and have kept growing.

On advertising, which OpenAI started showing to US users of its Free and Go tiers in February, the company says the business passed $1 billion in annualized revenue within 200 days. iGeeksBlog reports that OpenAI also claims more than 100,000 advertisers and that ads were live in 89 countries as of October 21. OpenAI has not said how many free users see ads or what advertisers pay.

How a "search" is counted

The comparison with Google depends heavily on definitions. Fry said every question that prompts ChatGPT to look something up on the web counts as one search, so a single conversation with many such prompts produces many searches. OpenAI has not explained how it decides which prompts are search-like, which Google figure it used, or the period and countries covered. It has not published supporting data, and none of the numbers has been independently audited.

Outside estimates show how sensitive the result is to method. iGeeksBlog notes that the SEO firm Ahrefs estimated in February that ChatGPT receives about 12% of Google's search volume, but that study counted only traditional-style searches, so the two figures are not directly comparable. Google's most recent public number, released in March 2025, put its volume at more than 5 trillion searches a year.

Context

The claim comes as OpenAI builds an ad business that competes more directly with search advertising, Google's core revenue source. Fry also said OpenAI plans to bring its Chat and Work experiences into one interface, without giving a date. Until OpenAI discloses its methodology, the 20% figure is best read as the company's own characterization rather than a measured market share.