Only 2.2% of consumers paid for AI in May at an average of $31 monthly, with spending growth tracking a straight line.
Andreessen Horowitz’s semiannual State of Markets report, drawing on a PNC research report, shows that 2.2% of consumers paid for AI services as of May, spending an average of $31 a month. Bank of America found similar adoption, with roughly 3% of U.S. consumers paying in March.
Meta’s personal assistant Muse and its plush mascot Jolly became a surprise hit, and OpenAI released Dots to chase the same cartoony idea. Instinct reached a $10 billion valuation on agentic errand-running, but frontier labs have otherwise moved toward enterprise contracts under the Anthropic model.
For builders, the math favors enterprise and vertical contracts over mass-market subscriptions. At $34 per customer, a Netflix-scale consumer base of 325 million subscribers yields only $11 billion a year, less than a third of OpenAI’s operating costs.
Consumer AI spending has stayed linear even as models improved sharply, and the leap from GPT-5.2 to Astra barely registers on adoption charts. Expect pressure to prove that agentic products like Muse, Dots, and Instinct can convert novelty into recurring revenue.
What matters
- Two charts in the Andreessen Horowitz report show paying AI users and their average spend rising slowly.
- Consumer AI spending grows linearly, so better models do not translate into more paying customers.
- Watch whether Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots, or Instinct turn consumer adoption into durable revenue.
Why it matters
Watch whether Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots, or Instinct turn consumer adoption into durable revenue.
This GenAI News article was prepared in original wording using reporting and materials published by TechCrunch AI. Source reference: https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/30/the-ugly-economics-of-consumer-ai/.
Drafted by the GenAI News review pipeline.