# Apple Mac AI Surge, Reddit Search Monetization, and Emerging Market AI Adoption

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-05-02

## Transcript

This is TechCrunch.
Every Sunday, we cover the week's tech news on This Week in Tech.
Hi, this is Leo Laporte, inviting you to join me this week with Stacey Higginbotham from Consumer Reports, The Verge's Victoria Song, and my car guy, Sam Aboul-Samad.
We'll talk about Tim Cook leaving Apple, thousands leaving Meta involuntarily, and why Australia's social media ban just isn't working.
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You'll find it at twit.tv, our website, and wherever you get your podcasts.
People are finally using Reddit search.
I'm Imran Sheik and your weekend crunch featuring three big tech headlines starts right now.
Apple's iPhone sales and services revenue were the stars of the show in the tech giant's most recent quarter, but the Mac quietly outperformed, helped by growing demand for AI workloads.
Wall Street investors had expected to see Mac revenue in the low $8 billion range, but Apple reported $8.4 billion in the second quarter ended March 28th, a notable beat for a non-core segment of the tech giant's business.
In addition, investors ahead of earnings believed that Mac sales would be essentially flat year over year.
Well, instead, Mac sales were up 6% on an annual basis, the company told investors.
The company's total revenue was $111.2 billion, a 17% increase from the same period last year.
Apple chalked up some of the Mac growth to recent product launches, including the well-received MacBook Neo.
However, those fun, colorful computers were only on sale for a few weeks after the March 4th pre-orders began.
Realistically, most units shipped mid to late March, and some demand may have been pushed into April as certain models sold out.
Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts on the company's Q2 earnings call on Thursday that customer demand for the Neo was off the charts and higher than Apple had expected.
He also noted that Apple set a record in the quarter for customers new to the Mac.
partly due to the Neo.
Cook attributed the Mac sales growth to the use of the platform for running local AI models like OpenClaw, something that took Apple somewhat by surprise as Mac Mini and Mac Studio devices sold out in recent weeks.
On Thursday, OpenAI said India has emerged as the largest user base for ChatGPT Images 2.0 since its launch last week.
However, third-party data reviewed by TechCrunch points to a more measured global response, with limited overall growth alongside sharp spikes in select emerging markets.
ChatGPT Images 2.0, opening eye's latest image generation upgrade, is designed to handle more complex prompts and produce detailed visuals, including accurate text across multiple languages.
While early patterns from the company suggest users, especially in India its largest market, are using it to create personal visuals such as avatars, stylized portraits, and fantasy-themed images.
Data shared by SensorTower and SimilarWeb with TechCrunch suggests the rollout has led to a more mixed global response.
ChatGPT's app downloads rose 11% week over week following the launch per SensorTower, but overall engagement gains were modest, with daily active users and sessions up only around 1%.
SimilarWeb data also shows a limited increase in ChatGPT's global web traffic, rising about 1.6% week over week during the same period.
However, sensor tower data indicates some emerging markets, including Pakistan, Vietnam, and Indonesia, saw sharper spikes in ChatGPT's app downloads with increases of up to 79% week over week during the rollout period.
Now these early patterns highlight how AI image tools are being adopted differently across markets.
While India's large user base is driving over all scale, sharper spikes in countries like Pakistan and Indonesia point to stronger new user demand in emerging markets following the launch.
After being harried by complaints that its search function needed improving, Reddit has, in the last few years, invested in its search engine and has even added AI features to help its users find what they're looking for.
Well, it appears that investment is finally paying off.
The company has seen a 30% year-on-year jump in the number of people using search every week, CEO Steve Huffman said on Thursday.
Huffman noted that search has been one of the major drivers of user acquisition and retention for the platform.
Earlier in February, the platform started testing product placement through AI search results in the U.S.
Huffman said that around 40% of conversations on Reddit are commercial in nature, and 84% shoppers feel more confident in their buying decisions after researching on Reddit.
The social platform ended the quarter with more than 493 million weekly active unique users, up 23% from the same period last year, and about 126 million daily active unique users, a 17% improvement from a year earlier.
Reddit reported a 7% improvement in U.S.
visitors, reaching 53.5 million daily active unique users and 73.3 million daily active unique users internationally, a 26% increase.
The company said it plans to reach a billion daily users worldwide and 100 million daily users in the U.S.
Now, besides search, the company said its machine translation feature, which now supports over 30 languages, has driven significant user growth in the past few quarters.
Reddit reported revenue of $663 million in Q1 2026, beating Wall Street's expectations of $609.8 million.
The company also said it only spent $1 million in capital expenditures in the quarter.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Ivan Mehta, Jagmeet Singh, Sarah Perez and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here on Tuesday and until then you can find us at TechCrunch.com.
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