India has emerged as the largest user base for ChatGPT Images 2.0 since its launch last week, OpenAI said on Thursday. However, third-party data reviewed by TechCrunch points to a more measured global response, with limited overall growth alongside sharp spikes in select emerging markets.

ChatGPT Images 2.0, OpenAI’s latest image-generation upgrade, is designed to handle more complex prompts and produce detailed visuals, including accurate text across multiple languages. Early patterns from the company suggest users — especially in India, its largest market — are using it to create personal visuals such as avatars, stylized portraits, and fantasy-themed images.

Data shared by Sensor Tower and Similarweb with TechCrunch suggests the rollout has led to a more mixed global response. ChatGPT’s app downloads rose 11% week-over-week following the launch, per Sensor Tower, but overall engagement gains were modest, with daily active users and sessions up only around 1%. Similarweb data also shows a limited increase in ChatGPT’s global web traffic, rising about 1.6% week-over-week during the same period.

However, Sensor Tower data indicates some emerging markets — including Pakistan, Vietnam, and Indonesia — saw sharper spikes in ChatGPT’s app downloads, with increases of up to 79% week-over-week during the rollout period.

India, meanwhile, remained a major source of activity during the rollout. Sensor Tower estimates show ChatGPT was downloaded about 5 million times in India during the launch week, compared with roughly 2 million in the U.S., though growth remained modest on a week-over-week basis. Similarweb data also points to a limited uptick in engagement, with daily active users in India rising about 3.4% week-over-week during the same period.

In India, the early trends suggest ChatGPT Images 2.0 is largely being used as a form of self-expression. Rather than purely functional outputs, users are creating studio-style portraits from everyday photos, social media-ready images, and imaginative visuals that place themselves at the center, OpenAI said.

The early patterns also highlight how AI image tools are being adopted differently across markets. While India’s large user base is driving overall scale, sharper spikes in countries like Pakistan and Indonesia point to stronger new-user demand in emerging markets following the launch.

OpenAI’s Images 2.0 launch comes amid intensifying competition in AI image generation. Google’s earlier image-focused model, the original Nano Banana, also saw strong early traction in India, indicating how the nation has become an important market for image generation.

With the new ChatGPT Images release, OpenAI is pushing further with improvements such as better rendering of non-Latin text, including Hindi and Bengali, and new “thinking” capabilities that allow it to refine outputs and generate multiple variations from a single prompt.

Beyond stylized portraits and avatars, OpenAI said early Images 2.0 users in India are experimenting with a wider range of formats — from fantasy newspaper covers to tarot-style visuals and fashion moodboards. Users are also using the AI tool to restore older photos and create cinematic portrait collages, the company said, suggesting early patterns of more personal use.

Skio, a 2020 Y Combinator alum that was founded by self-described college dropout Kennan Frost, has been acquired by competitor Recharge, the companies announced on Thursday.

Both Skio and Recharge make products that handle subscription payments for brands.

While the official press release did not disclose the terms of the deal, Frost (who had previously left the company), posted on X, LinkedIn, and Instagram that his startup walked with $105 million cash and had only raised $8 million from investors. That’s a healthy return by any measure.

His posts about the deal were reposted by Skio investors Y Combinator and Nicolas Wittenborn, founder of VC firm Adjacent.

Frost had not been running the company for about two years, according to a LinkedIn post by Skio’s current CEO, Aidan Thibodeaux, who began as the startup’s first COO. When he took over, he described a grind that involved no spend on marketing, ads, or a sales team. Instead, they focused spending exclusively on building the product. He and the founding CTO Andrew Chen made every sales call themselves, he wrote.

Frost’s story is even more stirring. In his Instagram post, he wrote that he solo-founded the startup after having a panic attack that caused him to leave his job as an engineer at Pinterest. COVID shut the world down two weeks later.

Apple reported a record quarter on Thursday. Yet outgoing CEO Tim Cook warned of some gathering storm clouds in the form of memory chip supply issues that could impact business in the near future.

“Today Apple is proud to report our best March quarter ever, with revenue of $111.2 billion and double-digit growth across every geographic segment,” Cook said during Thursday’s earnings call. “iPhone achieved a March quarter revenue record, fueled by such extraordinary demand for the iPhone 17 lineup.”

Less rosily, Cook relayed that Apple spent more on memory chips in March than in previous quarters though the company’s costs were offset by its ability to sell stockpiled inventory. But, he warned, the expectation is “significantly higher memory costs” in June and beyond — the likes of which may “drive an increasing impact” on the business.

Cook was referencing what has commonly been called “RAMaggedon,” the trend of the AI industry guzzling up memory chips with such astonishing gusto it is spurring shortages. This is driving up the prices of hardware. Apple is primarily a hardware company, so that’s obviously not great news for its core products.

Most notably, the chip shortage has impacted the iPhone. Despite the strong sales figures touted by Apple on Thursday, it has previously been reported that RAM costs have quadrupled — impacting phone production costs, and putting John Ternus, Apple’s incoming CEO in a less-than-enviable position.

One possible result may be that Apple increases prices for the iPhone. “There’s just a little less flexibility in the supply chain at the moment for getting more parts,” Cook told Reuters on Thursday.

Ternus, who has served as Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, was on Thursday’s earnings call and praised Cook. “In my view, Tim is one of the greatest business leaders of all time. Stepping into the role of CEO is an incredible honor, and it means a great deal to me to have Tim’s trust and confidence,” Ternus said.

He will obviously have his work cut out for him when he begins the job on September 1. But he will still have Cook’s supply chain experience to lean on for a while. Cook will become executive chairman.