Olivia Moore: Consumer Use of AI is Expanding, but Less than 5% Pay for Even One Product
Andreessen Horowitz partner Olivia Moore stated on Bloomberg Tech that consumer use of artificial intelligence is expanding, but less than 5% pay for even one product. OpenAI and Anthropic currently dominate spending. The top 1% of users can spend nearly $1,000 a month. She believes the next consumer opportunity lies in categories that barely exist.
The data comes from the seventh issue of the Consumer AI Applications Ranking released on October 5, which uses YipitData's U.S. credit card panel for spending and should not be considered total company revenue. As of August, only 4.5% of U.S. consumers paid for at least one personal subscription to ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. Nearly half of Americans claim to have used AI, but only 25% use it daily. Moore's original statement was: "Usage is widespread, but very shallow for almost everyone."
Spending is extremely concentrated. The top 1% of spenders contribute 19.5% of observable consumer spending, surpassing the combined 16.6% of the bottom 50%. This group spends an average of $903 per month, an 80% increase over the past 18 months. The median for paying users is $25 per month, with budgets hardly increasing. The top 10% account for about half of observable spending.
ChatGPT's U.S. paid subscriptions are about three times that of Claude or Gemini, with monthly active users leading Claude by about 14 times. Claude has a higher conversion rate at its most expensive personal tier, with 7.3% of paying users opting for the $100 tier, compared to 1.3% for Google and 1.1% for ChatGPT. Earlier this year, Claude surpassed Gemini in the number of U.S. consumer subscriptions, although traffic still lags behind.
Among the top 50 in spending, 29 companies did not appear on the web or mobile traffic rankings. Moore categorized them as desktop applications and embedded agents within existing communications, which Similarweb and Sensor Tower cannot see. Only 7 companies appear on all three lists of web, mobile, and spending, including ChatGPT, Claude, Suno, Perplexity, Photoroom, Canva, and Notion. This issue saw only 11 new products enter the rankings, the fewest in seven issues. Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI launched a total of 127 new products in six months.
This reflects subscription concentration rather than widespread usage turning into revenue. The buyers are top users spending $903 a month, simultaneously purchasing automation and creative tools, while the sellers are free tiers that cover the vast majority of users. The beneficiaries are OpenAI and Anthropic, which have secured paid subscriptions. The pressured parties are applications with traffic that do not appear on the spending list, and ordinary paying users whose median spending remains at $25. Moore places the next incremental opportunity in social, entertainment, health, and other multi-user experiences, rather than creating another chat interface.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
a16z has been ranking the top 100 consumer AI applications since 2023, with the first six issues primarily focusing on web and mobile traffic. The seventh issue, released on October 5, added U.S. credit card spending, overseen by Olivia Moore. The traffic rankings have long been led by ChatGPT. The spending rankings include desktop agents and creative tools that are not visible in traffic, with 29 high-spending companies absent from the traffic list. This is the first time the rankings can separate usage from spending.
The shape of money follows a power law. Only 4.5% of Americans pay for mainstream personal subscriptions, and the top 1% of payers contribute 19.5% of spending, averaging $903 per month, an 80% increase over 18 months. The median is $25. Claude captures 7.3% of paying users at the $100 Max tier, while ChatGPT only has 1.1% at the same tier, but ChatGPT still has about three times the number of paying users. Top users also purchase n8n, Manus, Hermes Agent, as well as Higgsfield, Figma, and HeyGen. The labs launched 127 new products in six months, with only 11 new entries in the rankings.
This can be compared to whale spending in mobile games and Spotify's strategy of using free tiers to attract users while monetizing through paid tiers. In games, the top 1% can also contribute disproportionately to revenue, while the median player does not pay. AI consumption is in a similar phase: usage claims to approach half the population, but paying remains below 5%. Moore sees the next opportunity in social, entertainment, health, and multi-user experiences, rather than just adding another office suite.
Structurally, pricing power has not shifted to the mass market. Free chat interfaces are subsidized by labs, and pricing power lies where top users are willing to continuously spend on automation and creative tools. The traffic rankings price attention, while the spending rankings price desktop agents and proprietary model creative tools. Suno's entry into the top ten in spending, while only ranking nineteenth in traffic, indicates that style and datasets can be charged separately without first becoming a general model. The mass market has yet to enter this pricing table.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
- Usage can exceed half, but payment remains in single digits.
- The top 1% of bills are larger than the combined total of the lower half.
- What is invisible in the traffic rankings is often what drives spending.