Nano Banana Saves Google: Gemini Dethrones ChatGPT as GOOG Hits $3 Trillion

Google’s Gemini app hit the top of the Apple App Store on September 15, dethroning ChatGPT for the first time since OpenAI’s chatbot launched nearly three years ago. The catalyst wasn’t a breakthrough in artificial general intelligence or some new reasoning mode—after all, Gemini 2.5 was released in March—it seems to be the public’s thirst for making memes and editing images.

“Image editing is one of the most popular use cases for Nano Banana,” the company tweeted last week. While Google didn’t provide any specific reasons for its come-from-behind surge in popularity, given the timing, it’s safe to assume that Nano Banana gave the company a huge bump.

One specific prompt for Google’s new image editing model let users transform photos into 3D collectible-style portraits complete with plastic packaging and display bases. That was enough to make the Gemini have its “wen moon” moment.

Within two weeks of going viral in early September, Gemini hit #1 on both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store globally. The app added 23 million first-time users and users generated over half a billion images in days, according to Google’s VP Josh Woodward.

Google Trends data shows global searches for Gemini overtook ChatGPT on September 12—the first time that’s happened since ChatGPT’s November 2022 debut.

Before Nano Banana, Gemini pulled in about 13 million monthly downloads compared to ChatGPT’s 64 million, according to AppMagic. ChatGPT commanded 60% of AI-related web traffic with nearly 6 billion monthly visits, almost 10 times Gemini’s numbers despite being integrated into Android devices and Google services used by 2 billion people.

The surge helped push Alphabet’s market cap past $3 trillion, with shares climbing 4% to around $252. That puts Google’s parent company in rarefied air alongside Nvidia ($4.3 trillion), Microsoft ($3.8 trillion), and Apple ($3.5 trillion).

Alphabet’s stock has climbed nearly 30% year-to-date, outpacing the Nasdaq’s 15% gain. The September milestone came after a favorable antitrust ruling that avoided forcing Google to divest Chrome or Android. But the Nano Banana phenomenon contributed directly to investor enthusiasm. Analysts project the feature could help Google increase its revenue through new Gemini subscriptions.

“If Gemini can remain at the top of the App Store charts, we believe more investors will start to view Gemini as a strong core offering with incremental use cases that complement (as opposed to cannibalize) the core search experience,” Keybanc Capital analyst Justin Patterson wrote in a report.

OpenAI learned this lesson months ago. Its “Ghiblify” feature—which transformed photos into Studio Ghibli-style animations—drove more than 1 million people to sign up for ChatGPT in one hour. The feature went so viral that OpenAI had to implement rate limits after users generated millions of whimsical portraits, even recreating controversial moments like the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the Ghibli style.

xAI discovered the same dynamic with Grok, though Elon Musk’s company took a different approach. When Grok users found they could generate anime-style “waifus” without the content restrictions other AIs imposed, downloads spiked 300% in Asian markets. Musk himself posted several generated images on X, alongside a “spicy mode” that let users generate NSFW videos using Grok’s AI

ChatGPT still dominates on raw metrics—700 million weekly active users and over 1 billion daily queries in the last quarter, but Gemini’s sudden rise shows how quickly the landscape can shift when an AI feature catches fire on social media.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis tweeted: “Congrats to the @GeminiApp team… this is just the start.”

Let’s hope there are more memes to come.