How Many People Use AI? Global Facts and Figures for 2026

Summary

An article combining DataReportal, provider disclosures and national studies estimates that 2.42 billion people, or 29.2% of the world’s population, actively used generative AI in April 2026. About 5.9 billion people had never knowingly used it, while around 2.2 billion people were still offline at the end of 2025 and therefore unable to use these services. Provider figures show the scale of individual platforms but cannot be added together because people use several services: ChatGPT reported 900 million weekly active users, Meta AI about one billion monthly users, Gemini 950 million, and other services reported smaller totals. The article estimates that only 70 million to 100 million people pay for AI subscriptions worldwide, using 80 million for its chart; OpenAI alone reported 50 million paid consumer subscriptions and more than 9 million business users in February 2026, while Anthropic and Google did not disclose comparable totals. Adoption varies sharply by country and methodology: reported rates range from 58% for any AI use among German adults in a Bitkom study to 32.2% under Eurostat’s stricter measure, and Eurostat found use among 16- to 24-year-olds far exceeded use among people aged 65 to 74. The article also estimates 25 million to 35 million regular AI coding-agent users, with a midpoint of 30 million, after accounting for overlapping audiences and incomparable metrics. OpenAI reported 20 million active Codex users in August, while its earlier official figure was more than 5 million weekly active users; GitHub Copilot had 4.7 million paid subscriptions, Cursor more than one million daily users, and Anthropic disclosed growth for Claude Code without an absolute count. The central conclusion is that AI adoption is expanding rapidly but remains concentrated among connected users: regular AI use is still an early advantage, paid use represents roughly 1% of humanity, and coding-agent use about 0.36%, though the article emphasizes that these are estimates rather than a global census.