a16z Releases Global Top 100 AI Apps List: ByteDance Shines, Dating and Cross-Modal Apps on the Rise

十字路口Crossing·August 22, 2024·0·1

New shifts, new opportunities, new ambitions.

a16z's influential "The Top 100 Gen AI Apps" list received its semiannual update on August 22, quickly going viral.

Jike user MorrisGump[1] summarized several highlights worth noting:

Compared to six months ago, 30% of the list consists of new faces (this figure was 40% in the March 2024 list), indicating that the AI application-layer landscape is gradually taking shape. Among these, c.ai, janitor, spicychat, candy.ai, crushon, and yodayo have shown stable performance.
Whether web or mobile apps, most of the newcomers are from Chinese teams, especially ByteDance, which launched five products: Doubao, Cici, Coze, Gauth, and Hypic (and they even missed the biggest one, CapCut).
AI dating is an emerging growth category, with representative products boasting over a million users including LooksMax (profile optimization), Umax (profile optimization), and RIZZ (chat assistant).
More than half of the products focus on multimodal creative tools, such as the recently buzzworthy Viggle, Luma, Udio, and Suno; by contrast, consumer-facing entertainment apps don't seem to have seen many new developments.

Below is the full translation.

Keeping up with the ever-expanding consumer generative AI product space is a dynamic and rapidly evolving undertaking, whether we're building new time-saving workflows[2], exploring real-world[3] applications[4][5], or experimenting with new creative tech stacks[6]. But amid the constant barrage of product launches, investment announcements, and hyped features, it's worth asking: which generative AI apps are people actually using? Which behaviors and categories are gaining traction among consumers? Which AI apps are people sticking with, rather than just trying and abandoning?

Welcome to the 3rd edition of the Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps list.

Every six months, we dig into the data to rank the top 50 AI-first web products (by unique monthly visits) and top 50 AI-first mobile apps (by monthly active users). This time around, nearly 30% of the companies are new to the list compared to our previous March 2024 report[7].

Data source: Sensor Tower, July 2024

Data source: Similarweb, July 2024

Yet beyond the logo-filled interest of these rankings, the data reveals several notable trends, including emerging and expanding categories, new competitors, and engagement patterns.

Here are some of our key findings:

The magic of creative tools[8] continues to captivate consumers. 52% of companies on the web list focus on content generation or editing across modalities — including image, video, music, voice, and more. Of the 12 new companies on the list, 58% are in the creative tools space.

This includes four of the top five first-time entrants:

Luma[9] (No. 14)
Viggle[10] (No. 21)
SeaArt[11] (No. 29)
Udio[12] (No. 33)

The biggest leap over the past six months belongs to music generator Suno[13], jumping from No. 36 to No. 5.

In our previous list, most content generation tools focused on images. Over the past six months, other modalities have risen: image generation now accounts for just 41% of top content generation sites. Of the five first-time generative tools, only one, SeaArt[14], is in images. There are three new entrants in video (Luma[15], Viggle[16], and Vidnoz[17]) and one in music (Udio[18]) — two modalities that have made enormous strides in output quality over the past year.

What about mobile? Image and video content editing is the most common use case. Accounting for 22% of spots on the mobile list, it's the second-largest product category — users are eager to edit content on their phones. While startups are also making their mark here, many of the highest-ranked new entrants are legacy creative tools pivoting to become generative AI-first, such as Meitu[19] (No. 9), SNOW[20] (No. 30), and Adobe Express[21] (No. 35).

This marks the third time ChatGPT[22] has topped both the web and mobile lists by a wide margin. But competition to become the best consumer assistant is heating up.

Perplexity[23] now ranks No. 3 on the web — this AI-powered search engine focuses on delivering concise, real-time, and accurate answers to queries, complete with cited sources. According to Similarweb data, Perplexity's visit duration (over 7 minutes) slightly exceeds ChatGPT's, indicating strong user engagement. Perplexity also made the mobile top 50 for the first time.

Anthropic's Claude[24], arguably the most direct ChatGPT competitor, climbed from No. 10 to No. 4 on the web. The company recently launched Artifacts[25], going head-to-head with ChatGPT's GPTs[26].

On mobile, AI assistant Luzia[27] debuted at No. 25 — the company claims 45 million users globally, primarily Spanish speakers. Luzia initially launched[28] as a WhatsApp-based chatbot but rolled out a standalone mobile app in December 2023.

TikTok parent ByteDance is making a major push into web-based AI products. Three of its apps made the list for the first time: edtech platform Gauth[29] (No. 44), bot builder Coze[30] (No. 45), and general assistant Doubao[31] (No. 47). Doubao[32] also entered the mobile list for the first time at No. 26.

Beyond Doubao, photo and video editor Hypic (No. 19) and assistant Cici (No. 34) are also ByteDance products, giving the company six total spots across both lists. This includes apps targeting different geographic markets; on mobile, Cici is the English-language version of Doubao.

Why so many new entrants? ByteDance established[33] a generative AI app R&D division called Flow in late 2023 and has been launching new AI apps in the United States (and internationally) under other company names since early 2024[34].

On web and mobile, there's only one new category: aesthetics and dating. This includes three new entrants: LooksMax AI[35] (No. 43), Umax[36] (No. 44), and RIZZ[37] (No. 49) — all on the mobile ranking.

LooksMax and Umax analyze users' photos, give them scores, and provide "recommendations to become more attractive." Umax also generates a 10/10 version of the user's photo, while LooksMax analyzes the attractiveness of the user's voice. On their onboarding screens, LooksMax claims over 2 million users, and Umax claims 1 million.

Both apps monetize through subscriptions to unlock results: Umax charges $4.99 per week (or requires inviting three friends), and LooksMax charges $3.99 per week.

RIZZ, on the other hand, focuses on improving messaging in dating apps. Users can upload conversation screenshots or profiles to get suggestions on what to say. Messages can be copied directly from RIZZ into dating apps.

In many cases, Discord traffic is a leading indicator that an app will climb the web and mobile rankings, particularly in content generation.

Some products launch on Discord to "sandbox test" the product and build community, then launch a website and largely migrate away. These products "graduate" from Discord's rankings (a typical example is Suno[38], which ranked No. 31 on Discord traffic in our last list but doesn't appear in Discord's top 100 servers this time).

Other companies maintain significant Discord usage even after launching standalone products. Midjourney[39], for example, holds the No. 1 position in invite traffic across all Discord servers.

As of July, 10 AI companies ranked in the top 100 across all Discord servers by invite traffic. Half of these are new entrants compared to January:

Among the top 10 Discord servers, half allow users to generate content directly within Discord, typically through paid subscriptions; the other half use Discord for community building, customer support, and resource sharing.

It's clear that a new generation of AI-native[40] products and companies is growing at unprecedented speed and engaging users more deeply. We believe AI will be the foundation of category-defining companies over the next decade.