MW Google's AI momentum continues as Gemini scores another victory over ChatGPT

By Christine Ji

While ChatGPT still holds the lead in total users, Gemini is growing six times faster, according to a recent report

Weekly active users of Gemini are up 52% since the beginning of August, according to reports by the Information and Sensor Tower.

As the Alphabet $(GOOGL)$ unit Google works to close the gap between its Gemini and the OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT, the latest data just gave investors a fresh surge of confidence in the tech giant's artificial-intelligence edge.

In the past few months, Gemini has gained market share and pulled ahead of OpenAI's model on key metrics such as new user growth and desktop growth, according to reports from the Information and the market data company Sensor Tower.

Gemini's monthly active users have grown by more than 30% between August and November of this year, reaching 346 million, according to the Sensor Tower report. On its third-quarter earnings call, Google put Gemini's monthly active users much higher, at 650 million. Regardless, the product is behind ChatGPT on that metric.

While ChatGPT's total monthly active users remain in the lead at 810 million, they only grew 5% over the same time period. Additionally, Gemini's desktop visits doubled while ChatGPT's grew 1%. Weekly active users were up 52% for Gemini and 18% for ChatGPT from the beginning of August, the Sensor Tower report found.

Features such as the viral image generator Nano Banana, as well as the recent launch of Gemini 3, have boosted the popularity of Google's AI model. At the beginning of 2025, Gemini had fewer than 100 million weekly active users while ChatGPT had well over 200 million.

Read: Google's winning streak continues as viral Nano Banana gets an upgrade

"These data points don't fully capture Alphabet's upside," HSBC analyst Rossington wrote in a Wednesday note, highlighting that Google's AI Overviews on traditional queries, also powered by Gemini, have likely increased as well. The success of AI Overviews and AI Mode in Search have helped ease investor concerns that chatbots could destroy Google's traditional search business. Google shared in July of this year that AI Overviews had reached 2 billion monthly active users.

Alphabet's true advantage comes from its dominance across all parts of the AI ecosystem, from infrastructure to distribution, Rossington added. Unlike OpenAI, Alphabet has built its AI technology on its own custom tensor processing units and can funnel users to Gemini across its existing businesses in search, YouTube and Android.

Shares of Alphabet have risen 67% since the beginning of 2025.

Rivalries between large language models are fierce as companies scramble to capture more users, so Google will need to continuously innovate to stay at the forefront, analysts say. "Any peer will strive to emulate and overtake any standards," Rossington wrote.

Read on: As ChatGPT turns 3, here's what's crashing the party

-Christine Ji

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December 10, 2025 13:44 ET (18:44 GMT)

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