Google’s Gemini app has taken the number one position on the Apple App Store, surpassing ChatGPT, following a booming viral Nano Banana trend. The tool allows for image generation, letting users turn personal photos into 3D collectable-style portraits.
According to Google, image generation has become the most popular use case. The Nano Banana tool recorded millions of downloads on the App Store. The search engine giant revealed that a single prompt allowed users to transform portraits into figurine-style images, complete with packages and display bases.
Nano Banana tool fuels Gemini’s growth to top spot
After going viral in just two weeks in September, Google’s Gemini overtook ChatGPT, reaching the top spot on both the App Store and Google Play Store, adding 23 million first-time users and generating more than five hundred million images. Google Trends showed searches for the Gemini app surpassed OpenAI’s ChatGPT for the first time since November 2022.
Update: In the last 4 days, @GeminiApp has added:
+ 13M more first-time users (23M+ total now)
+ 300M more images (500M+ total now)🍌 @NanoBanana is unreal
— Josh Woodward (@joshwoodward) September 8, 2025
Before Google introduced the Nano Banana tool, Gemini’s monthly downloads averaged 13 million, compared to ChatGPT’s 64 million. OpenAI had commanded the market, with nearly 60% of AI traffic going through ChatGPT and close to 6 billion monthly visits. According to Statista, in March 2025, ChatGPT recorded 64.26 million downloads against Gemini’s 13.92 million.
The success of Nano Banana reflects OpenAI’s Ghibli feature, which drove more than 1 million new sign-ups in an hour. Elon’s xAI Grok experienced a 300% spike in Asian markets after users discovered its anime-style Waifu generator. Gemini’s sudden surge reflects how viral tools can quickly drive the adoption of AI platforms.
The momentum has triggered the Alphabet stock to climb over 4% today, trading at $251.76 with a day range of $244.98 – $252.75. The parent company of Google pushed its market cap to $3.05 trillion, joining Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple on the list of the most valuable companies in the Fortune 500. The Alphabet stock has also maintained a positive YTD of 32.25%, signaling positive investor confidence in the company’s overall projected growth.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT still leads the raw usage metrics with over 700 million weekly active users and over a billion daily requests throughout the last quarter.
Gemini surpasses ChatGPT amid Google’s legal wars
Demis Hassabis, Google’s DeepMind CEO, acknowledged the developments on Gemini and congratulated the Gemini team on X, saying that it was just the start.
The Nano Banana tool, launched just last month, has received significant adoption, specifically from the Philippines, with 25.5 million image creations in the first two weeks. The tool was designed as a 1/7 scale collectable on acrylic bases, which resembles real product photos. The tool marks the third major AI portrait trend of 2025, following ChatGPT’s Ghibli and the Barbie Box challenge.
The surge follows last week’s blow to the search engine giant with a billion-dollar advertising lawsuit. Cryptopolitan reported that the firm faced renewed pressure after PubMatic, an ads platform, filed another lawsuit seeking billions in compensation over Google’s dominance in digital advertising. The platform accused the search engine giant of unfairly controlling auctions and reducing publisher revenues, with PubMatic CEO arguing that the alleged illegal monopoly repeatedly stifled their innovation.
The recent case builds on Google’s series of court events, including an April ruling in which a judge found the search engine firm guilty of monopolizing ad servers. The DOJ is pushing to break up its AdX exchange, and European regulators are fining Google €2.95 billion for favoring its ad services. If courts force divestiture, some analysts noted that it could reshape the ad tech industry by weakening Google’s dominance and creating more opportunities for rivals like PubMatic, Amazon, and The Trade Desk.
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