ChatGPT Growth Slows: OpenAI Faces Rising App Deletions and IPO Risks

OpenAI has faced an uncomfortable signal for its main consumer product: ChatGPT growth is slowing, and the number of app deletions is rising noticeably. Against the backdrop of discussions about a potential IPO, this transforms an ordinary mobile metric into a question about how sustainable the entire company's business is.

Growth is no longer explosive

According to Sensor Tower, in April 2026 the number of ChatGPT deletions grew 132% year-over-year. A month earlier, the figure was even steeper: plus 413% year-over-year. For a product of ChatGPT's scale, deletions themselves do not mean an immediate crisis, but they clearly show that part of the audience has stopped perceiving the service as the only alternative and has begun to switch more actively between multiple AI assistants.

At the same time, growth in active audience is also slowing. In January, ChatGPT's monthly audience grew 168% year-over-year, and by April it was already at 78%. This is still strong momentum for an application of this size, and ChatGPT, according to Sensor Tower's assessment, maintains a substantially larger user base than competitors. But the market doesn't just look at absolute size; it looks at trajectory: if the category leader is losing momentum, investors and partners begin asking questions about the growth ceiling.

Competitors are gaining momentum

The most concerning signal for OpenAI is that the slowdown is not happening in a vacuum. In recent months, ChatGPT downloads grew only 14% year-over-year, while Claude showed roughly 11x growth over the same period. This doesn't mean Claude has already caught up to the leader in scale, but it does mean that new audiences are much more willing to test alternatives than before. And this already undermines the familiar narrative of ChatGPT's unquestionable dominance in the consumer market.

An additional blow to brand perception came at the end of February, when OpenAI signed an agreement with the Pentagon. Sensor Tower specifically noted the reaction of the mobile audience in the US, and it was telling: instead of the usual user rotation, the market saw a sharp spike in deletions, a drop in downloads, and an increase in negative reviews. The reason is important not just politically: for a mass application, such spikes mean that corporate news instantly impacts user metrics.

• On February 28, ChatGPT deletions in the US jumped 295% day-over-day
• the average daily deletion rate before this was around 9%
• ChatGPT downloads after the news first dropped 13%, then another 5%
• Claude's downloads in the US on those same days grew 37% and 51%
• the number of one-star reviews for ChatGPT increased sharply

It's important to note that these are primarily mobile signals, not a complete picture of OpenAI's entire user base. But such shifts are often the first to show a change in sentiment: people don't necessarily stop using ChatGPT entirely, but increasingly keep Claude, Gemini, or other services nearby and distribute queries among them. For partners and investors, this signals that the AI chatbot market has become truly multi-platform.

Why this matters for an IPO

A drop in downloads alone rarely destroys the story of a company at OpenAI's level. The problem is different: this data overlays on reports that the company is already missing its own growth plans. According to data from The Wall Street Journal, as reported by Reuters, OpenAI has missed both its internal revenue targets and new user targets in recent months. Separately, it was reported that the company failed to achieve its internal goal of 1 billion weekly ChatGPT users by the end of 2025.

For a potential IPO, such a set of metrics looks problematic for several reasons. The market will not focus on the prominence of the ChatGPT brand, but on how reliably OpenAI can convert popularity into sustainable economics. Investors need a story not just about hype, but about demand predictability, revenue conversion, and the ability to finance the company's infrastructure appetites. This is exactly when analysts begin to separate a strong product from a sustainable public company:

• Does the service retain audiences when competitors get stronger
• Does growth convert to revenue quickly enough
• Is the business pace sufficient to cover future computing contracts
• Is the consumer segment becoming less predictable than it seemed a year ago

Reuters also reported that CFO Sarah Friar expressed concerns: if revenue doesn't grow fast enough, the company may face difficulties paying future computing obligations. OpenAI publicly rejected overly dramatic interpretations of this story and insisted that management is united in betting on further increases in computing power. But the very fact that such discussions are occurring shows: for the company, it's no longer just about usage records, but about the quality of growth.

What this means

For OpenAI, this is not a catastrophe but a transition to a more mature phase of the market, where scale and brand recognition alone are no longer enough. For the entire industry, the signal is even more important: the era of one undisputed winner is ending, and the key metric becomes not just the number of installations, but retention, monetization, and the ability to defend one's share when users easily switch between multiple AI services and choose the best tool for the specific task at hand.