The Queen of the Internet, a.k.a. famed venture capitalist Mary Meeker, just released her hotly anticipated report on internet trends and, boy, the content isn’t totally surprising, but it is still an insane tome.
The in-depth 340-page analysis provides a colourful snapshot of AI’s rapid rate of uptake, including a vivid comparison showing the trajectory of OpenAI’s ChatGPT compared to Google’s earlier growth spike.
Per Meeker’s findings, ChatGPT’s annual search queries climbed to a whopping 365 billion in two short years. This is an impressive achievement and 5.5 times faster the time it took Google Search (11 years) to get to the same point.
These numbers represent a dramatic change in behaviour, and an increased desire to use an AI chatbot as the primary information source, instead of search engines like in the past.
The report notes that “insatiable” demand for AI has led to “unprecedented” worldwide adoption. The likes of Instagram and YouTube all took between two and four years to reach 100 million users, yet ChatGPT got there in less than three months.
Ninety percent of ChatGPT’s users, by contrast, are now outside North America — global reach that it took the internet itself 23 years to achieve. India’s integral role in this rapid expansion (this country accounts for the highest %, i.e., 13.5%, of all ChatGPT’s users in mobile app) is clear.
Meeker’s report also discusses the battle between open-source and closed approaches to AI, saying: “Open-source initiatives are driving sovereign AI and community-fueled innovation and development, but closed models (e.g., GPT-4) are dominating consumer mindshare and enterprise adoption”.
Despite the blistering pace of the category and the heavy investment in AI infrastructure by tech titans such as Google and Microsoft, Meeker also alludes to important concerns about monetization, ethics, and the long-term sustainability of current business models — particularly those that rely on high-cost compute to support advanced AI systems.
But the overall message is unequivocal: AI isn’t just another technological pinprick; it represents a fundamental shift that is revamping global behaviors, industries and economic systems at a speed never before seen.
