a16z's top 100 AI apps: ChatGPT surges, DeepSeek takes #2

If you thought consumer AI had already crowned its permanent winners, think again. Venture firm Andreessen Horowitz just released the fourth edition of its Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps report, and the leaderboard has undergone a massive shakeup.

The biannual ranking tracks the top 50 web products by monthly unique visits via Similarweb and the top 50 mobile apps by monthly active users via Sensor Tower. In just six months since August 2024, 17 new companies broke into the top 50 web list. Notably, a16z purged legacy products that merely grafted AI on top, ditching the likes of Canva, Notion, and legacy photo editors like Pixlr, Fotor, and PicsArt to focus strictly on AI-native products.

ChatGPT roars back, DeepSeek detonates

ChatGPT proved that scale doesn't necessarily mean slowing down. After hitting a long usage plateau between March 2023 and April 2024, the flagship bot found a ferocious second gear.

While it took nine months to climb from 100 million to 200 million weekly active users, ChatGPT doubled again to 400 million weekly active users in less than six months, hitting that milestone in mid-February 2025. Per Sensor Tower, 175 million of those weekly users are now on mobile. The inflection points mapped directly to core product launches: GPT-4o's multimodality in spring, Advanced Voice Mode in late summer, and the o1 reasoning models in early fall.

Then came DeepSeek. Born out of Chinese hedge fund High-Flyer, DeepSeek launched its public web assistant on January 20. In just 10 days, it captured enough traffic to rank as the number two AI product globally for the entire month.

DeepSeek hit 10 million users in just 20 days, easily beating ChatGPT's initial 40-day sprint to that same mark. On mobile, after launching on January 25, it ranked 14th in monthly active users within five days and jumped to number two globally in February, capturing 15% of ChatGPT's mobile user base. Despite bans across government devices in several US states and restrictions in South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan, its traffic held strong, with 21% originating from China, 9% from the US, and 8% from India. Importantly, Sensor Tower noted this wasn't ghost engagement: weekly sessions and time spent per user slightly edged out both Claude and Perplexity.

The creative stack shifts

Beyond conversational bots, a16z highlighted two structural shifts: AI video models graduating from wobbly experiments to genuinely dependable tools for short clips, and the sudden rise of "vibe coding." Natural language programming is expanding software creation to non-engineers, turning AI into an active builder rather than just a passive reference tool.

To track incoming threats, a16z also debuted the "Brink List," highlighting the next ten products sitting just outside the top 50 web and mobile cutoffs.

Why it matters

For everyday consumers, the message is clear: AI tools are evolving from novelty distractions into sticky daily drivers. The fact that ChatGPT's biggest surges followed voice, visual, and deep reasoning updates shows that utility, not hype, is what keeps people coming back. If you dismissed these apps a year ago as unreliable gimmicks, the latest multimodal and reasoning models are well worth another spin.

For the AI industry, DeepSeek's meteoric ascent shatters the narrative that distribution moats are impenetrable. A focused team with superior cost-efficiency bypassed traditional go-to-market playbooks and seized 15% of the market leader's mobile scale in weeks. That forces every incumbent to rethink their pricing, model efficiency, and open-weight strategies.

We think a16z's decision to strip out legacy wrappers like Notion and legacy photo editors was the right call. Genuinely AI-first UX is eating bolt-on features for lunch. However, DeepSeek's glaring hurdle remains geopolitical and regulatory pushback. Maintaining this torrid user growth while navigating international restrictions and building a sustainable monetization engine will be a far harder test than sparking the initial viral wave.