Grok Dethroned ChatGPT Last Week - Can It Sustain this Momentum?
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xAI launched Grok 3, a model it claims to be superior to OpenAI's latest update (o3-mini) last week, and the downloads followed. Within 24 hours, Grok became the most popular app in the US App Store, where it remained for several days, and is now sitting at #2, just below ChatGPT.
While it's dancing with ChatGPT, Grok also skipped over Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude in downloads and revenue.
A big week for AI's latest entrant. Let's see what the numbers say.
2025 has been a very active year for AI apps, and rightfully so, it's a $2B industry that's growing like wildfire and churning out new app millionaires in the process.
First it was DeepSeek, the Chinese app that took the AI world by surprise and made its way into millions of pockets in just a few days. Its reign was short, but almost right behind it came Grok's standalone app, and then last week Grok 3. xAI's latest advancement made the standalone app a true competitor to ChatGPT, undercutting ChatGPT's pro plan with a free one.
Wild!
I've been following the release of Grok as a standalone app ever since it was soft-launched in Australia last year. Now, a few short months later, the app is available globally (with a few exceptions) and packs everything ChatGPT has, including a reasoning model (like o3-mini), web search, image generation, and as of yesterday, voice mode.
Grok 3 is being released in parts, likely to gain as much attention as possible, and that seems to be working.
According to our estimates, Grok's rise began on Monday (2/17) and as of the 22nd, already managed to cross one million downloads from the App Store. The trend even includes one day where Grok's downloads outpaced ChatGPT's, but only by a few thousand.
FYI - Grok isn't available on Google Play yet, so I kept the comparison to the App Store alone.
In its dance with ChatGPT, Grok also outpaced all of the other competitors, including Claude, Perplexity, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot.
Another thing new in the Grok app is a new in-app subscription called Super Grok that costs $30/mo. or $300/yr. and unlocks all the AI just like having a Premium+ subscription to X unlocks, but at just a little more than half the cost.
It's been out for just 5 days, but in those 5 days, Grok managed to make more money than all other AI apps except for ChatGPT.
Our App Intelligence shows users spent a little over $340K on Super Grok so far, which I guesstimate to mean a little over 10,000 subscribers (if we assume a 30% annual and 70% monthly split, which isn't exactly conservative but I think works here). And keep in mind, Grok is free and the premium features are also available to X Premium+ users.
In the same period, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, and Gemini earned less - in that order. Perplexity was the closest at $258K and Gemini farthest at $28K, according to our estimates. Claude was somewhere in the middle and Copilot was closer to Gemini.
I don't expect this order to change any time soon, but I'm very curious to see if Grok can get closer to ChatGPT's growth levels from 2023.
There's something whimsical to Grok that xAI has refined in this latest iteration. Between its capabilities, which feel similar to ChatGPT's o3-mini model, the single model approach that doesn't require selecting what you're talking to, and its great response speed, I expect Grok to become a concerning competitor to ChatGPT.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
