BGAD AI Adoption Index

The only global index tracking AI adoption across consumers and developers, monthly

August 2026 edition

The month in brief

The BGAD AI Adoption Index reached 10,558 in August 2026, up 1.9% on July and 151% higher than a year ago, meaning global AI adoption is now running at roughly 106 times its level when ChatGPT launched. Builders again did the heavy lifting: the Developer sub-index rose 14.9% month on month as SDK downloads passed 297 million, more than seven times the level of a year ago, while public attention eased 4.9%. The Consumer sub-index printed 4.2% lower, but this reflects a recalibration rather than a fall in usage: August brought two landmark official disclosures, OpenAI confirming more than one billion weekly active users and Google confirming that the Gemini app has passed one billion monthly users, and the series has been reset to those figures after several months of trend-based estimates. Both milestones are the clearest evidence yet that AI assistants have reached the scale of the largest consumer platforms in history. The headline lesson is unchanged: the adoption curve is still rising, with developers building ahead of consumers, the pattern that has preceded every wave of

Key findings, August 2026

• Total Index: 10,558, +1.9% month on month and +151% year on year.
• Consumer Use: 8,116, -4.2% month on month.
• Developer Use: 116,426, +14.9% month on month.
• Attention: 286, -4.9% month on month.

The index since launch

The past 12 months

Monthly and year-on-year change

How the index is built

Three sub-indices, each rebased to December 2022 = 100, combined as a weighted geometric mean: Consumer Use (45%, disclosed monthly active users of ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, weekly actives converted at 1.5x), Developer Use (35%, npm downloads of the openai, @anthropic-ai/sdk and langchain packages) and Attention (20%, Hacker News stories with "AI" in the title and Wikipedia pageviews for the core AI articles). Consumer figures are interpolated between disclosures and reset when a new official figure lands. The index is a relative measure of momentum, not an absolute count. Charts and data are free to republish with attribution to BGAD Consulting.