Energy customers appear greater than prepared to pay for AI-powered results.
Greater than 30 million energy customers are paying for one among Snap’s subscription plans, together with Snapchat+ and its ad-free “platinum” tier. The corporate introduced the milestone as a part of its third-quarter earnings, saying that its non-advertising “different” income grew 84 p.c in contrast with final 12 months.
Snap launched Snapchat+, which affords customers bonus options like the power to see which associates re-watched your Story, in 2022. Since then, the corporate has added Lens+, a subscription for AI-powered AR results; Platinum, which eliminates promoting; and paid storage for the app’s Reminiscence characteristic.
The corporate did not share a breakdown of subscribers throughout all of the plans, however famous that Lens+ “has grown practically 600% since January 2026.” That progress suggests at the very least a few of Snapchat’s customers are notably enthusiastic in regards to the app’s AI-powered options, like its AI photograph enhancing characteristic referred to as AI Photoshoot. “AI-powered options have helped Lens+ exceed our expectations, demonstrating how new inventive experiences can drive demand for our paid merchandise,” CEO Evan Spiegel stated throughout the firm’s earnings name.
Whereas Snap is not as related to AI as a few of its social media friends, it is notable that AI has helped it drive paid subscribers. X revealed earlier this 12 months that it had about 6.3 million paid subscribers throughout X Premium and Grok.
Subscriptions had been a vivid spot for Snap. Spiegel stated that promoting income was rising “under our ambitions” and the corporate solely added 2 million new every day customers since final quarter. Snap stated that it could deal with reporting month-to-month lively customers quite than every day customers, starting in 2027. Snapchat at the moment has 977 million month-to-month customers.
The corporate additionally warned that its authorized challenges and “elevated regulatory scrutiny on youth-related points” might have an effect on its prospects. The corporate is coping with quite a few lawsuits over alleged questions of safety and state attorneys normal have pushed for Snap to undertake further security options following Meta’s high-profile settlement.
