Episode summary
Where does consumer AI stand at the end of 2025?
The a16z Show
· · Guests: Anish Acharya, Olivia Moore, Justine Moore, Bryan Kim
Summary
Consumer AI ended 2025 looking increasingly winner-take-most in general-purpose assistants, with ChatGPT still far ahead but Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and Grok carving out narrower strengths. The panel argued that the big model companies used 2025 to push hard into consumer surfaces, but the usage data still shows most people stick to one main product and rarely switch providers.
The biggest breakthroughs were in image and video. The panel repeatedly pointed to OpenAI’s image releases, Sora 2, Google’s Nano Banana and V3, and the way multimodal systems moved beyond aesthetics into realism, reasoning, character consistency, and even search-aware accuracy. They said templates and product sensibility matter as much as raw model quality: the right onboarding, prompts, and interface cues can be the difference between a model demo and a product people actually use.
Looking ahead to 2026, the panel was broadly optimistic for startups. They argued the labs are getting better at core models and incremental assistant features, but are still structurally worse at building opinionated standalone consumer UI. That leaves room in creative tools, pro and prosumer workflows, and app generation, especially where multimodality, distribution, and repeated workflows create durable usage and monetization.
Key takeaways
- The host said ChatGPT remains the clear leader, with 800 to 900 million weekly active users and only 9% of consumers paying for more than one major assistant.
- A guest argued that image and video models were 2025’s most viral consumer launches, citing OpenAI’s image model, Sora 2, Google’s Nano Banana, and V3.
- The panel said product design mattered more than ever in 2025, because prompts, onboarding, and template-based UI often determined whether users took the first step.
- A guest said the best consumer opportunities for 2026 may be in workflows with repeated context, such as connectors, proactive nudges, slide decks, note-taking, and browser automation.
- The panel was skeptical that the big labs will dominate standalone consumer apps, arguing their incentives favor incremental features over opinionated products.
- Several speakers said multimodal apps can now support real businesses, with one noting consumer products can charge usage-based fees and achieve over 100% revenue retention.
Notable quotes
“The models have gotten to the level of quality that you can build a real scalable app on top of them”
“For most the year, less than 10% of chatbt users even visited another one of the big LLM providers”
“These are product nuances that I I think makes people actually take the first step”
How the episode opens
For most the year, less than 10% of chatbt users even visited another one of the big LLM providers. — When you open Gemini, it has a popup says, "We got nano banana. Would you like to do something with it?" The little pain where you have to type something.
Yeah. — I don't I don't know what to do. — These are product nuances that I I think makes people actually take the first step.
The models have gotten to the level of quality that you can build a real scalable app on top of them. And so the hope is 2026 will be a huge year for consumer builders. Today we're talking about who won consumer AI in 2025.
This was arguably the year that we saw the big model providers OpenAI and Google most out of everyone make a major push of their own into consumer. Both in terms of new models they release but also in terms of new products, features and interfaces that target the mainstream user. Um, you might wonder why does it matter who is in the lead here?
There's some early signs that the general LLM assistant space might be trending towards winner take all or at least winner take most. So only 9% of consumers are paying for more than one out of the group of chatbt, Gemini, Claude and Cursor. And for most of the year, less than 10% of ChateBT users even visited another one of the big LLM providers like Gemini.
If we had to call it now, chatbt is currently in the lead by far at 800 to 900 million weekly active users. Gemini's at an estimated 35% of their scale on web and about 40% on mobile. And everyone else significantly trails this.
So Claude, Grock, Perplexity are all about 8 to 10% of the usage.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- consumer ai
- multimodal models
- distribution and branding
- product design and onboarding
- startup opportunities
Companies and tickers mentioned
- ANTH
- GOOGL
- GOOG
- META
- Anthropic
- OpenAI
- xAI
- Meta
- Perplexity
- ByteDance
- a16z
Watch the episode
Watch “Where does consumer AI stand at the end of 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.
