SimilarWeb data: This obscure AI company grew 8,658%, while OpenAI crawled along at 9%

Latest SimilarWeb‘s updates Global Ai Tracker reveals dramatic changes in the AI landscape. It paints a clear picture about market winners and losers. The comprehensive report tracks traffic trends across different AI tool categories and provides crucial insights for investors and industry strategists.

DevOps tools and code completion lead the pack, with a 72% growth year-over-year in the 12-week period that ended February 28, 2025. While AI alternatives gain traction, traditional educational technologies continue to decline, with a 20% drop in the same 12-week period.

The numbers show the reality of AI’s impact on the market: We have moved beyond speculation to actual market restructuring. The dramatic contrasts in the soaring developer tool and the plummeting EdTech platform show how AI is rapidly redrawing boundaries. The winners aren’t just technically better; they are fundamentally reimagining the way problems are solved, in a way legacy systems can’t match.

Let’s look at the most surprising findings from SimilarWeb’s latest intelligence report, which showcases the evolving AI landscape.

AI-powered developer tools show extraordinary momentum, with 72% year-over-year growth. DevOps and code completion tools have emerged as the category with the clearest product-market fit in the generative AI era.

Tools like Cursor (97% Growth) Replit (67%) growth shows that AI has the most immediate impact on software development. This creates a virtuous circle where AI accelerates creation of more advanced AI system. This suggests that AI’s most significant effects in the near future may be invisible to the consumer but crucial for technological progress.

2. The digital freelance contraction

Traffic on digital freelance platforms has consistently declined by 20% over the reporting period, raising serious questions about the future knowledge work. The traditional freelance marketplace model is under threat as AI tools are becoming more capable of producing written content, design assets and even code.

Each major platform in this category experienced significant declines. Fiverr – (-22%) Upwork – (-18%) Freelancer – (-15%) Toptal – 35% This pattern suggests that businesses are shifting budgets from human freelancers towards AI tools for certain categories, such as content creation and basic design work.

3. The resilience of design platforms in the face of AI art growth

In spite of the proliferation of AI image-generation tools, which showed 8% growth between February 2025 and February 2025, the traditional design platforms have shown remarkable resilience. They grew by 16% during the same period. Canva maintains 18% growth. Adobe Express Figma recorded 19% and 8% respectively.

This contradicts the narrative that AI cannibalizes their traditional counterparts. Data suggests that established design platforms are integrating AI capabilities successfully into their offerings. This creates a complementary relationship rather than a competitive relationship with generative technology.

4. Traditional EdTech’s accelerating demise

The traditional EdTech platforms have a downward trend that is consistent and continues to worsen over time.

Individual platform stories are even more dramatic. Chgg Course Herowas once a dominant player in the homework help market. Traffic dropped by 58% and 59% respectively. These platforms, which built business models around human tutors, and crowdsourced study material, appear to be particularly vulnerable to AI powered alternatives that offer instant, customized assistance.

5. The meteoric rise niche AI challengers.

This is the most impressive growth story, not from a tech giant but rather from relative newcomers. Deepseekin the general AI category posted an astounding 8,658% growth over the 12-week period ending in February 2025. OpenAI’s properties only grew by 9% during the same period, but these new contenders are redefining the market dynamics.

The DevOps Category, Lovable also showed explosive growth, with gains measured in thousands of percentage points over the entire tracking period. These patterns indicate that the AI market is still highly dynamic and offers opportunities for specialized tools, despite the presence established players, to capture significant market shares.

The new AI landscape is taking shape

SimilarWeb’s report provides more than just traffic data — it offers a window on the practical impact of AI across sectors. The data paints a nuanced portrait of AI, which is not just replacing existing tools but also creating new value and challenging established business models.

The message for businesses navigating the shifting landscape is clear: AI adoption doesn’t represent a single trend but rather a series specialized transformations that are happening at different rates in different sectors. The tools that gain traction don’t have to be the most advanced technologically, but rather those that solve problems for specific users.

As AI is used by developers to speed up software creation, as freelance platforms struggle to compete against automation, and as established design tools incorporate AI capabilities, not only are we witnessing technological evolution, but also economic restructuring. In this environment, strategic decisions require a deeper understanding of actual usage patterns and not just technological capabilities.

Although the AI revolution is uneven, its direction is clear. Platforms that use AI to create new value, rather than simply replacing human work, will thrive. The most advanced AI models will not be the real winners, but tools that use AI in order to empower humans to do what was previously impossible.