Photo by ishmael daro via Flickr.ChatGPT Search’s average EU monthly users have surged from 11.2 million to 41.3 million in the last six months.
In an article published by OpenAI Ireland Limited, the users growth of 268.75% happened in the six month period ending March 31. The previous half year period ending October 31, 2024, had only 11.2 million users.
OpenAI complies with the EU’s Digital Services Act
OpenAI Ireland Limited, which is one of the company’s EU divisions, publishes data about ChatGPT search every six months to comply with the EU regulations. The EU’s Digital Service Act (DSA) mandates transparency regarding the user base of online platforms.
Article 24(2) of the DSA requires platforms to report the average number of monthly active recipients in the EU over a six-month period. OpenAI has been publishing these figures to adhere to this regulation.
The increase in users may lead to ChatGPT Search being labeled as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) under the DSA. This classification is given to platforms with over 45 million average monthly active users across the European Union.
VLOPs are subject to stricter obligations, including risk assessments, independent audits, and increased transparency measures. Non-compliant VLOPs can face fines of up to 6% of their global annual revenue and may also be hit with daily penalty payments.
If a platform repeatedly violates the DSA, it can face temporary service suspensions within the EU. Additionally, failure to act on illegal content after notification can make the platform legally liable for that content.
Recent data from Opollo, a technology marketing agency, showed that ChatGPT Search’s market share has spiked by 720% in a span of 12 months. In early 2024, the AI-powered search functionality had a measly 0.25% of the overall market share. ChatGPT Search has 2.1% of the total search traffic in 2025. Other collected data from Datos and SimilarWeb showed that OpenAI’s search feature had a market share of 4.33% while Google maintained 83.54%.
According to a report by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), ChatGPT has doubled weekly active users from 200 million in August 2024 to 400 million by mid-February 2025. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is ranking first on the list of top 50 generative AI web products by monthly users. DeepSeek takes the second place, followed by Character.ai and Perplexity.
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