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

SimilarWeb‘s latest Global AI Tracker report reveals dramatic shifts in the AI landscape, painting a clear picture of market winners and losers. The comprehensive report tracks traffic patterns across various AI tool categories, providing crucial insights for industry strategists and investors.

DevOps and code completion tools lead the pack with a remarkable 72% year-over-year growth in the 12-week period ending February 28, 2025. Meanwhile, traditional educational technology platforms continue their downward spiral, declining 20% during the same period as AI alternatives gain traction.

These numbers reveal the stark reality of AI’s market impact: We’ve moved beyond speculation into actual market restructuring. The dramatic contrasts between soaring developer tools and plummeting EdTech platforms show how rapidly AI is redrawing competitive boundaries. The winners aren’t just technically superior; they’re fundamentally reimagining how problems are solved in ways legacy systems cannot match.

Let’s examine the most surprising takeaways from SimilarWeb’s latest intelligence report that showcase 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) and Replit (67% growth) demonstrate that AI’s most immediate impact may be on software development itself — creating a virtuous cycle where AI accelerates the creation of more advanced AI systems. This suggests that the most transformative effects of AI in the near term may be invisible to consumers but profoundly important for technological progress.

2. The digital freelance contraction

Traffic to digital freelance platforms has steadily declined by 20% throughout the reporting period, raising profound questions about the future of knowledge work. As AI tools become more capable of producing design assets, written content and even code, the traditional freelance marketplace model appears increasingly threatened.

Every major platform in this category showed significant declines: Fiverr (-22%), Upwork (-18%), Freelancer (-15%) and Toptal (-35%). This pattern suggests that businesses may be shifting budget from human freelancers to AI tools for certain categories of work, particularly in content creation and basic design tasks.

3. The resilience of design platforms amid AI art growth

Despite the proliferation of AI image generation tools showing 8% growth by February 2025, traditional design platforms have demonstrated remarkable resilience with 16% growth in the same period. Canva maintained 18% growth, while Adobe Express and Figma showed 19% and 8% growth, respectively.

This challenges the narrative that AI tools cannibalize their traditional counterparts. Instead, data suggests that established design platforms may be successfully integrating AI capabilities into their offerings, creating a complementary rather than competitive relationship with generative technologies.

4. Traditional EdTech’s accelerating decline

Traditional EdTech platforms show a consistent downward trend culminating in a 20% year-over-year decline, with the trajectory worsening over time (as indicated by the “falling” trend designation).

Individual platforms tell an even more dramatic story. Chegg and Course Hero, once dominant players in the homework help space, saw traffic plummet by 58% and 59%, respectively. These platforms, which built their business models around human tutors and crowdsourced study materials, appear particularly vulnerable to AI-powered alternatives that offer instant, personalized assistance.

5. The meteoric rise of niche AI challengers

The most stunning growth story isn’t from an established tech giant but from relative newcomers. Deepseek, in the general AI category, posted an astonishing 8,658% growth in the 12-week period ending February 2025. While OpenAI’s properties grew by just 9% in the same timeframe, these emerging contenders are redefining market dynamics.

In the DevOps category, Lovable demonstrated similarly explosive growth, with increases measured in the thousands of percentage points throughout the tracking period. These patterns suggest that the AI market remains highly dynamic, with opportunities for specialized tools to capture significant market share despite the presence of established players.

The new AI landscape takes shape

The SimilarWeb report offers more than just traffic statistics — it provides a window into the practical impact of AI technologies across sectors. The data reveals a nuanced picture where AI isn’t simply replacing existing tools, but is creating new value in specific domains while challenging established business models in others.

For businesses navigating this shifting landscape, the message is clear: AI adoption isn’t a monolithic trend, but a series of specialized transformations happening at different rates across sectors. The tools that gain traction aren’t necessarily the most technologically advanced, but those that solve real problems for specific user groups.

As developers use AI to accelerate software creation, freelance platforms struggle to compete with automation and established design tools integrate AI capabilities, we’re witnessing not just technological evolution but economic restructuring. In this environment, understanding actual usage patterns — not just technological capabilities — becomes essential for strategic decision-making.

The AI revolution may be uneven, but its direction is unmistakable. The platforms that thrive will be those that harness AI’s capabilities to create new value rather than merely replacing existing human work. The real winners won’t be the most sophisticated AI models, but the tools that use AI to empower humans to accomplish what was previously impossible.

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