Episode summary
The Top 100 Most Used AI Apps in 2025
The a16z Show
· · Hosts: Erik Torenberg, Olivia Moore, Justine Moore
Summary
The episode breaks down a16z’s fifth Consumer AI 100 ranking, which tracks real consumer usage across the top AI-native web and mobile products rather than revenue. The guest explains that the list combines Similarweb web traffic and Sensor Tower mobile usage, then surfaces the top 50 AI-native products on each side to show what people actually use, including free users.
A major theme is stabilization: there were 11 new web names versus 17 in the prior edition, while mobile remains more volatile because app-store policies keep changing. The guest highlights the rise of vibe coding tools like Lovable, Replit, and Bolt, alongside the continued dominance of companionship apps such as Character AI, Janitor, Spicy Chat, PolyBuzz, and Crush On.
Google had a notably strong six months, with Gemini, AI Studio, NotebookLM, and Google Labs all appearing prominently. The guest also argues that Chinese AI companies are showing up in three ways: products built for China, products built in China but used globally, and Chinese models distributed through US-facing wrappers and platforms. Looking ahead, the host and guest expect more proumer and enterprise crossover, better model reliability, and new categories like health, education, finance, and social.
Key takeaways
- The guest says the Consumer AI 100 measures usage, not revenue, making it a better read on consumer imagination than paid adoption.
- The web list had 11 new names this cycle, down from 17 six months earlier, suggesting the consumer AI ecosystem is starting to stabilize.
- Vibe coding is emerging fast, with Bolt on the brink list and Lovable and Replit on the main web list; the guest says many leading products show strong early revenue retention.
- Google landed four unique properties on the web list, including Gemini at number two and AI Studio in the top 10, which the guest says was a surprise.
- The guest expects proumer tools, health, education, personal finance, and social products to become bigger categories as models get more reliable.
Notable quotes
“we take every website and every mobile app in the entire world and we sort them in descending order of usage”
“So, we have Bolt on our Brink list just below the top 50 cutoff. And then we have both lovable and replet on the web list”
“Gemini was number two. It was right behind ChateBT. It has just about 10% of Chat GBT's traffic on web, but it's much closer on mobile”
“there's 14 of these companies. So we have Chachi PT, not a surprise. Perplexity and PO all made the list in what I call kind of general LLM assistance”
How the episode opens
Hi, I'm Justine. And I'm Olivia. And welcome back to the A16Z podcast.
Today we're going to be discussing the consumer AI top 100 list. So Olivia, let's start because you are compiling the list and you've been doing this for a while. What is this list and kind of what's the purpose of it?
So this is our fifth time doing this list. We do it every six months. We started at basically the dawn of the consumer genai era.
And the purpose is just to get a sense of what real consumers are actually using in AI. Uh so we as a sample set we take every website and every mobile app in the entire world and we sort them in descending order of usage. So for websites this is monthly visits globally.
For mobile apps this is monthly active users. We use similar web and sensor towers these two data sources. And then we grab the top 50 from each of those sources that are AI native companies.
Um, so you'll notice that this captures usage, not revenue. So it's not paid usage only. It's all usage, even people who are using the products for free, which to me gives an even better and I think kind of more real sense of what is capturing consumer imagination in AI.
Totally. Yeah. I think I feel like a common question we often get um as folks who are consumer investors in AI is like what are people doing on AI besides?
What should I be doing? That too. Yeah.
And so so I feel like these lists are a really helpful way for folks to get a sense of like what are some of the use cases, what are some of the properties that are getting really big, getting a lot of users that you might not know about.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- consumer ai 100
- ai-native apps
- big tech impact
- chinese ai trends
- network effects
Companies and tickers mentioned
- GOOGL
- GOOG
- Grok
Watch the episode
Watch “The Top 100 Most Used AI Apps in 2025” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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The a16z Show, this episode and its artwork belong to Andreessen Horowitz. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
