More than half of U.S. consumers use generative AI, but just 4.5% pay for ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, and only 13% of payers ever add a second AI product.

The top 1% of AI spenders average $903 a month on product-building tools.

Twenty-nint of the 50 highest-earning AI vendors don’t appear on the most-used lists, and nearly all consumer AI revenue still comes from subscriptions rather than ads.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a mainstream consumer technology. But paying for it remains a much narrower habit. The consumers who do spend heavily on AI, however, are opening their wallets at levels that look less like entertainment subscriptions and more like business software budgets. The top 1% of consumer AI spenders averaged $903 a month in August, up 80% over the past 18 months, according to a Monday (Oct. 5) analysis from Andreessen Horowitz of YipitData spending data.

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The median AI payer spent $25 a month, a figure that has changed little over time. The top 1% accounted for 19.5% of observed consumer AI spending, more than the bottom 50% combined at 16.6%, Andreesen Horowitz found. The figures come from YipitData’s U.S. consumer panels and reflect observed spending rather than total company revenue.

S. 6% in June, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence October 2026 Consumer AI Benchmark Report .

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