Who uses AI, how much, and for what.
People in each group. Log scale: each gridline is 10× the previous. Blue = reported by OpenAI. Grey = Andrej Karpathy's rough estimates.
What this measures: How the world splits by how much AI people use, from those who have barely tried a chatbot to the few thousand people working inside AI labs.
The three grey bars are one researcher's rough estimate, which he calls “napkin math”. Nobody has measured these groups. The two blue bars are company figures from different months.
Karpathy's tiers describe the whole world (about 8 billion people) and are not a breakdown of ChatGPT's users; his shares add up to about 95%. OpenAI does not say how it counts or deduplicates weekly users, and its latest subscriber count (February 2026) is seven months older than its 1.2 billion figure, so the two should not be divided. Groups overlap: a paying subscriber is also a weekly user.
| Item | Value | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Have barely used AI | 6 billion | about 75% of people · Karpathy's estimate |
| Use ChatGPT in a given week (Sept 2026) | 1.2 billion | OpenAI-reported · Karpathy puts casual users of all free chatbots at 1–2 billion |
| Pay for ChatGPT (Feb 2026) | 50 million | “more than 50 million” consumer subscribers · OpenAI-reported |
| Use frontier models and agents for professional math and code | 20 million | about 0.2% of people · Karpathy's estimate |
| Work with unreleased systems inside AI labs | 5,000 | Karpathy's estimate |
Notable
Anthropic says Claude helped redesign a cancer therapy and drew up 35,000 antibody designs in a month. Almost none is tested in people yet.
6drug developers in Anthropic's first results, nearly all preclinical
Shipments were 13,000–18,000 in all of 2025. Chinese firms built over 95%, and most went to labs and shows, not factory work.
~25,000humanoids shipped Jan–Jun 2026 (IDC estimate), up from ~18,000 in 2025
Humanoid jobs are still narrow trials, with figures from the makers. Agility, a top US maker, sold $1.8M in 2025 and lost $138M.
$1.8MAgility Robotics' 2025 sales, against a $138M net loss (SEC filing)
OpenAI's weekly users rose from 800 million to 1.2 billion in a year. In February 2026 about 1 in 18 paid, and most messages were personal.
1.2 billionweekly ChatGPT users, as OpenAI counts them (Sept 2026)
Notable
In a 71-patient trial, lung capacity rose on the drug and fell on placebo over 12 weeks. A 320-patient final trial began in September 2026.
+98.4 mL vs −20.3 mL12-week change in lung capacity, top dose vs placebo (71 patients)
The FDA's list counts 1,614 AI devices since 1995, 335 of them in 2025 alone. In one study of 903 such devices, 4.8% were later recalled.
1,614AI devices on the FDA's list, 1995 to 29 June 2026
Three big surveys find 49–62% of US adults use AI. Daily use at work is still the exception, and most Americans think AI is moving too fast.
45% → 62%US adults aged 18–64 using AI, Aug 2024 to May 2026 (St. Louis Fed)
Claude ran an office snack shop at a loss in 2025. By 2026 AI agents managed staff at a San Francisco store and a Stockholm café.
26 of 26staff time-off requests the AI managers approved in four months
In Anthropic's data, 52% of chats are people working with Claude. Businesses building Claude into software hand over about 3 in 4 tasks.
52% vs 45%chats working with Claude vs handing the task over (Nov 2025)
A year after 10,000 pre-orders at a refundable $200 each, we found no announced delivery of the $20,000 robot to a paying customer.
$20,000price of 1X's NEO home robot; no deliveries announced by Nov 2026
Experts blind-graded AI and professional work, such as legal briefs, from 44 jobs. The 84.9% is OpenAI's own count on its own test.
47.6% → 84.9%tasks where AI matched or beat experts, Sep 2025 → Apr 2026 (OpenAI)
Google's 75% counts AI-suggested code that engineers approved. Independent studies, using stricter definitions, find much lower shares.
25% → 75%Google's reported AI share of new code, Oct 2024 → Apr 2026
With late-2025 AI tools, returning developers took 18% less time and new recruits 4% less. Neither is certain; METR expects more.
−18%task time with AI, returning developers (range −38% to +9%)
Trials of a twice-yearly asthma injection began in late 2025 and early 2026. Results are due in 2028 and 2029; nothing is approved yet.
786 + 786patients planned in the two final-stage trials (registry, Nov 2026)
The 95% rests on 52 interviews and a 153-person survey with a strict test of success. It points to a real problem, not a measured rate.
In 2025, 16 skilled developers took 19% longer with AI while feeling 20% faster. With late-2025 tools, a follow-up found 18% less time.
+19% → −18%task time with AI: early-2025 tools (2025) vs late-2025 tools (2026)