quote: "The top 1% user is spending $903 per month on AI... The median is spending $25." a16z's Olivia Moore breaks down who actually pays for AI, under 5% of US consumers, with the top 10% of them driving half the revenue: "About half of Americans report using AI, and about 25% think they're interacting with AI on close to a daily basis." "The spending data is much more concentrated." "Our Yipit panel shows around 4.5% of US consumers are paying a subscription to an AI product. Some other sources say as low as 2% or 2.5%. It is expanding, that's doubled from a year ago." "Even within that top 4.5% who do spend, the top 10% of those are more than half of the revenue, and the top 1% are 20% of the revenue... The top 10% of users are driving this market." "We could also see what products they're actually spending on. Probably unsurprisingly, it was mostly developer tools, productivity tools, creative tools, things used to build, make, sell." @omooretweets | The seventh edition of our Top 100 Consumer AI Apps is here, including a new dimension this time: what consumers are actually paying for. a16z's Elena Burger sits down with Olivia Moore and Josh Elman to unpack the current state of consumer AI: The data reveals a striking power-user economy. Only a small share of consumers currently pay for AI, but among those who do, spending is heavily concentrated at the top. Olivia and Josh discuss why developers, creators, and other power users dominate spending today, and why subscriptions may not be the business model that ultimately brings consumer AI to everyone. They also dig into the rise of personal agents, the different trajectories of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, how ads could reshape AI economics, and the enormous amount of consumer white space still left to build, from shopping and entertainment to social, dating, and marketplaces. 00:56 Inside the 7th edition 05:55 Muse and Instinct's launch numbers 09:14 The privacy wall for personal agents 14:39 The AI spending power law 20:20 Why subscription is the wrong model 23:51 OpenAI's $1B ad run rate 29:21 ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini 32:30 Where creative tools still win 45:12 The white space: dating, shopping, entertainment YouTube: https://t.co/bxo4NbwAvt @omooretweets @JoshElman @VirtualElena