ChatGPT downloads down ~250%
In the same period Claude hit the top of the App Store, ChatGPT downloads reportedly dropped by around 250%, indicating a meaningful consumer sentiment shift.
Snapshot · God Mode Podcast
I Pay $200. I Use $12,500 in Tokens. AI Costs Crashed 850x and Subscriptions are Dead. | GMP EP03
Explore episode
Mar 9, 2026
Where this was said
Topic 1: Every Time Anthropic Draws a Line, OpenAI Picks Up the Contract
At 5:25 · chapter starts 3:05
Why Anthropic Walked Away From the Pentagon Deal
The Pentagon gave Anthropic a hard 5PM deadline to accept unrestricted military use of Claude. Dario was in meetings and missed it. By 11PM, Sam Altman had tweeted a done deal with OpenAI. What looked like a principled stance was also, at least partly, a scheduling failure — but the PR outcome for Anthropic was paradoxically positive.
Anthropic #1 App Store ranking
Claude hit the number one spot in the App Store in the same week Anthropic turned down the Pentagon contract, suggesting the ethical stance was a net PR win.
$200M/year Pentagon–OpenAI deal
After Anthropic missed the Department of Defense's deadline, OpenAI signed a $200 million per year government contract the same evening.
Similar snapshots
MVP built in one week
Sam's initial MVP was coded in approximately one week using ChatGPT voice mode and copy-pasting code, with no prior technical experience.
Discord vs email for young users
Sam argues Discord is 10x better than email for building relationships with younger users who rarely check their inbox.
Monthly infra costs ~$780–$980
Sam's monthly operating costs include Cursor ($200), AI image generation ($100), AI video generation ($200), hosting ($100), email marketing ($80), and AI compute ($300–$500).
ChatGPT-powered pain point research
Sam recommends copying days of Discord chat history into ChatGPT and prompting it to list recurring pain points as a fast, free market research technique.
50 free tools built total
Bhanu and his team built approximately 50 free tools to attract search traffic, each linked back to SiteGPT.
New tool built in under 5 minutes
With AI coding tools like Cursor, Bhanu can now create a new free marketing tool in less than 5 minutes by referencing existing tools.
KD filter < 10 for rankable keywords
Bhanu filters Ahrefs keyword results to show only those with a keyword difficulty below 10, making them realistic ranking targets for any decent website.
Minimum 1,000 monthly search volume
Bhanu sets a minimum search volume of 1,000 monthly searches when selecting keywords to target with free tools.
20 downloads/day at launch
PropGPT averaged 20 downloads per day right after launching on the App Store through influencer marketing.
