Vietnamese people spend 700 million hours on AI applications in half a year

According to the global AI market report for the first half of the year by analytics company Sensor Tower, Vietnam recorded 18.6 billion sessions using AI applications in six months, an increase of more than two times compared to 8.82 billion in the same period last year.

Time spent using AI applications on phones increased to 704 million hours in the first half of the year. Compared to the same period in 2025, the number of hours spent by Vietnamese people with AI applications will increase more than twice, from 300 million hours. If we calculate both time spent on the web and the app, the number of hours spent increased slightly, with a tendency to shift from the web to the app.

At the same time, the amount of money Vietnamese users pay for AI applications also increased sharply. Revenue from in-app purchases (In-app Purchase – IAP) increased from 7.44 million USD in the first half of 2025, to 14.4 million USD in the first half of this year, reflecting the trend of users not only downloading experiences but also being willing to spend money to use advanced features.

A special point in the report is that the Asia-Pacific region in the first quarter of 2026 recorded a 3.75% decrease in monthly active users (MAU) for the first time, after 13 consecutive quarters of growth. This is said to mean the AI ​​market is moving from a phase of rapid expansion to competition in terms of user retention and increased usage value. However, Vietnam is still one of the markets with a high level of interaction with AI, including domestic applications.

According to the latest rankings as of the first quarter of 2026, ChatGPT and Gemini continue to have the largest number of monthly active users in Vietnam. Standing in third place is AI Hay, an application developed by Vietnamese businesses that surpasses many international AI products such as Grok or DeepSeek.

It is also one of the few native AI applications that has maintained its position in the top group in the domestic market, while many local AI applications in other countries have dropped in rankings. For example, Korea’s Wrtn fell from 5th place last year to 7th place this year in this country’s market. Luzia of Brazil also went from 4th to 7th place.

Share with VnExpress, AI Hay representative said that to meet market demand, the startup has expanded from a question and answer application into a multi-function assistant for study, work and life. According to statistics, the most used feature is asking with images. Users often take photos of documents to translate, take photos of exercises for instructions on how to solve them, or take photos of invoices and notices to quickly ask for necessary information, instead of entering written commands as before. AI Hay application currently has more than 22 million downloads, up from 15 million a year ago.

“Optimization for domestic users in terms of language and context understanding, as well as features developed according to actual needs is the factor that helps domestic AI attract Vietnamese users,” said AI Hay representative. For example, after the recent high school graduation exam, the company developed features to solve exam questions, predict university admission, and provide career counseling based on test scores, attracting millions of users.

Previously, in the Gemini report, Google said Vietnam leads Southeast Asia in native language use with 89% of commands sent in Vietnamese – the highest rate in the region. According to experts, this data reflects that AI is changing from a chatbot answering questions to a support tool for solving specific tasks. Users not only search for information but also ask AI to translate documents, analyze data, support programming, summarize content or explain technical issues.

This trend occurs as AI gradually passes its initial boom phase. Globally, Sensor Tower estimates that users spent more than $4 billion on AI applications in the first half of 2026, with about 2.3 billion downloads. Time spent and number of access sessions both increased sharply compared to a year ago.

To promote AI applications for domestic users, AI Hay representative said that they are completing the opening of API, allowing other applications and software to connect directly and use the AI Hay platform to build products. In the long run, this will help application developers, businesses, and universities easily integrate Hay AI features into their products, instead of having to build them from scratch.

“This is considered an important step for AI Hay, not only proving the technological capacity developed by Vietnamese people, but also contributing to helping domestic businesses and organizations have more options for AI platforms developed by Vietnamese people instead of completely depending on foreign platforms,” ​​said a Vietnamese startup representative.