There seems to be no stopping the Gemini train as it looks to catch up with ChatGPT in the generative AI platform race.
According to the latest data from SimilarWeb dated January 2, Google’s Gemini has crossed a significant psychological milestone, capturing 21.5% of global generative AI traffic share. This marks the first time any competitor has breached the 20% threshold since ChatGPT’s emergence transformed the AI landscape. Meanwhile, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has fallen to 64.5%, dropping below the 65% mark and continuing a steady erosion that has seen it lose more than 22 percentage points over the past twelve months.
The numbers tell a story of remarkable momentum. Just one month ago, Gemini held 18.2% of traffic share. The 3.3 percentage point gain in a single month represents Gemini’s continued acceleration, building on the 4.5 point surge it achieved between November and early December. Over the past year, Google’s AI assistant has grown nearly fourfold, rising from just 5.7% in January 2025 to its current position above one-fifth of the market.
ChatGPT’s decline, while still leaving it with a commanding lead, has been equally striking. The platform has shed 3.5 percentage points in the past month alone, falling from 68.0% to 64.5%. A year ago, ChatGPT commanded 86.7% of traffic share, operating as a near-monopoly in the consumer AI space. That dominant position has now contracted to roughly two-thirds of the market, with the rate of decline showing little sign of slowing.
The competitive landscape beyond the top two reveals a market still in flux. Grok, xAI’s AI assistant, continues its steady climb, reaching 3.4% and surpassing the 3% benchmark for the first time. The platform has grown from 2.1% six months ago to its current position, and now sits within striking distance of DeepSeek, which has held relatively flat at 3.7% after retreating from a peak of 4.8% in mid-2025.
Perplexity maintains its 2.0% share, having carved out a niche as an AI-powered research tool rather than a general-purpose chatbot. Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, also holds steady at 2.0%, having grown modestly from 1.5% a year ago. Microsoft’s Copilot remains at 1.1%, unchanged from recent months despite the company’s substantial investments in AI infrastructure and its close partnership with OpenAI.
The dramatic reshaping of market share reflects more than simple user preference shifts. Gemini’s ascent has been powered by a series of strategic product releases throughout 2025. The launch of the Nano Banana image generation model gave Gemini creative capabilities that resonated with users, followed by Gemini 3 Pro, which substantially improved reasoning and response quality. The recent release of Nano Banana Pro further enhanced image generation with refined controls and faster processing, helping differentiate Gemini from competitors in multimodal capabilities.
The data suggests a fundamental transition in the generative AI market. What began as a single-player dominance is evolving into a genuine duopoly, with ChatGPT and Gemini increasingly defining themselves in relation to each other. For the broader AI industry, these numbers raise important strategic questions. Network effects and first-mover advantages were supposed to create durable moats in AI platforms, yet we’re witnessing significant user migration despite ChatGPT’s head start and mindshare. Product velocity, feature differentiation, and integration capabilities appear to matter more than early observers predicted.
The competitive intensity is likely to increase further in 2026. Both Google and OpenAI have signaled major product updates in their pipelines, while smaller players like xAI are showing consistent growth. What seemed like a settled market just twelve months ago has proven to be anything but, with Google demonstrating that even a late start in consumer AI can be overcome with sustained execution and innovation.
For now, ChatGPT retains a substantial lead, but the velocity of change suggests the competitive dynamics remain highly fluid. The question is no longer whether Gemini can compete with ChatGPT, but rather how much further the gap will close—and whether we’re heading toward a stable duopoly or continued fragmentation across multiple platforms.