OpenAI website closing fast on a billion visitors a month

ChatGPT designer OpenAI’s website saw its traffic soar in March towards the coveted billion mark for unique monthly visitors, research by web trawler Veza Digital found.

Throughout March, a total of 847 million users accessed OpenAI’s website, a month-on-month surge of just over 54% that brought Sam Altman’s flagship project into the world’s top 20 if one goes by online visitors.

If, for some reason, anyone remained unconvinced that large-language models are officially a big deal and likely here to stay, the findings should silence the last of the naysayers.

“This is indicative of a clear public interest in AI-powered solutions, which legislators are rushing to regulate before it spirals into unchartered territories, like artwork copyright and ethical challenges,” said Veza Digital’s CEO Stefan Katanic. “Debates about AI are divisive, but one thing we can probably all agree on is that AI is no longer the future — it is the present.”

Given the amount of traffic heading through OpenAI’s website, it’s difficult to contradict him. By the end of March, it had climbed nine places to become the 18th most visited portal on the planet.

In the previous month, it enjoyed an even bigger surge in rankings when it jumped from just outside the top 50 to sit at 27th place. According to Veza Digital, one in nine visitors are from the US, making it the leading source country for OpenAI’s visitors. But it also means the ChatGPT phenomenon is far from just a homegrown success.

Veza Digital says it based its findings on the scrutiny of raw data from Similarweb, correlated with its own analysis of website traffic statistics.

At the time of writing, SimilarWeb places OpenAI at one place higher as of April. It’s now in 17th position, with Google, YouTube, and Facebook in the top three spots.

This puts OpenAI in illustrious company: ChatGPT went seemingly overnight from being a relatively obscure AI project to a breakout success in November last year.

“The ChatGPT phenomenon spread like wildfire at the end of 2022 and we expect it to soon break all records of being the fastest ever website to reach one billion monthly active users in such an incredibly short space of time,” said Katanic.