Similarweb: AI search market grows to 9.5 billion visits and is no longer a ChatGPT monopoly

A year ago, AI search meant one thing: ChatGPT. That era is over. The market is growing explosively and fragmenting fast at the same time. That is the conclusion Similarweb analysts reached in their "2026 Generative AI Landscape" report, which covers June 2025 through May 2026. Over that year, generative AI platforms drew a combined 9.5 billion visits a month worldwide.

How the market grew over the year

Nine and a half billion visits a month is a scale comparable to the world's largest traditional search engines. According to Similarweb, that is the combined traffic of all generative AI platforms from June 2025 to May 2026. The figure reflects a full-fledged mass shift: AI search has stopped being a niche for tech enthusiasts and become part of everyday behavior for a broad audience.

This structural growth to 9.5 billion visits a month built up over twelve consecutive months. It reflects durable consumer behavior, not a one-off burst of interest in a novelty.

The Similarweb report records several structural shifts at once:

• 9.5 billion visits a month: combined traffic of generative AI platforms (June 2025 – May 2026)
• ChatGPT is no longer synonymous with AI search as such
• The market is growing in volume and splitting among several players at the same time
• The audience is "maturing": a shift toward broader demographic groups
• Platforms have started monetizing traffic through advertising

"The market is growing explosively and splitting apart at the same time" — that is how

Similarweb describes the state of generative AI search in its "2026 Generative AI Landscape" report.

Why ChatGPT is no longer the only player

A year ago, AI search was "essentially one product with one name," Similarweb notes. Now users are spread across several competing platforms, each with its own model, ecosystem and audience. The market has followed a classic evolutionary path: from the early monopoly of a single player to a mature, competitive structure with several centers of gravity.

Fragmentation creates risks and opens opportunities at once. For developers and publishers who built their distribution around a single dominant channel, it is a direct signal to rethink strategy: betting on one name no longer works. For advertisers, a fragmented market means more inventory and less dependence on a monopolist.

The demographic "maturing" is another sign of a more established market. The early audience of young tech enthusiasts is giving way to broader age cohorts. By the Similarweb analysts' logic, this is not a slowdown but a confirmation: the product has moved out of a technology niche into mass everyday use.

Advertising arrives in AI search

Platforms have started monetizing multibillion-visit traffic through advertising, a natural step for a market of this size, the Similarweb report notes. The trajectory repeats the history of traditional web search: first a clean, convenient user experience, then the gradual insertion of commercial formats.

The key question is how aggressive the monetization will be. So far, AI search has beaten classic search precisely because there is no ad noise around the direct answer. If platforms overdo the ad formats, part of the audience may switch to a competitor that keeps a balance between monetization and answer quality.

What this means

AI search is entering a maturity phase: more players, a broader audience, the first ad revenue. Companies that treat AI channels as their only window to a target audience should diversify their presence, because the market structure no longer supports a bet on one name.