THE STATE OF CONSUMER AI. PART 2: ENGAGEMENT AND RETENTION

Summary from the TLDR AI newsletter

ChatGPT's engagement lead is wider than its market share lead: DAU:MAU sits at 45% versus Gemini's 22%, and WAU:MAU has climbed from 50% in mid-2023 to 82% today, putting it ahead of Gmail and Spotify and approaching Instagram. Week 4 retention of 66% beats every enterprise app in the dataset and is more than double Perplexity's 24%, while most apps see retention flatten at scale. The rarest signal is ChatGPT's smile curve: one of only three products alongside Gmail and Chrome where retention dips and then recovers, meaning OpenAI's product releases are actively reactivating lapsed users, not just attracting new ones.