The race to 2%.

On October 4, Ruben Hassid posted a chart of how long four technologies took to go from 2% to 50% adoption in the US — smartphones 6.5 years, the internet 7.5, cars 15, computers 19 — with AI “at year zero” after a16z showed 2.2% of US households now pay for AI. It starts every line at 2%. So how long did it take each of them to get there?

Put the two halves together and the shapes differ more than the headline suggests. Cars were slow both ways: 14 years to 2%, 15 more to 50%. Smartphones incubated for more than a decade among executives with BlackBerrys and Treos, then went mainstream in six and a half years. Computers did the opposite — a quick start among hobbyists, then a two-decade grind into the average home.

The internet was fast on both legs, but its 2% line in 1994 was mostly AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe subscribers — about 5 million Americans in the winter of 1994, per the Times Mirror Center . Those services had been on sale since 1979, which is why the start date matters.

The 2% end of each bar comes from Hassid’s chart. The start is a judgment call, so we used one rule for all five: the first product of its kind sold to American consumers. Pick a different starting gun and the bars move — sometimes a lot. The table shows the alternatives.

Two of these are worth a second look. The iPhone launched in June 2007, after smartphones had already crossed 2% of US mobile subscribers — Telephia counted 3.8% among recent device buyers by the third quarter of 2006. And if you start the internet clock with CompuServe’s consumer service in 1979 rather than the first commercial internet provider, it took 15 years, not 5.

The 2% dates are as precise as Hassid’s sources allow. Car registrations reached 458,377 in 1910 (FHWA) against about 20 million households, or roughly 2.3%. The 1981 computer figure is an estimate from sales; most estimates put households with a computer under 1% in 1980. Treat every bar as plus or minus a year.

Every other line on the chart measures having the thing. AI’s line measures paying for it. PNC’s card-data panel found 2.2% of households paid for a generative AI subscription in May 2026, up from well under 1% in 2023 — and PNC warns its customers may not mirror the country. Bank of America’s figure is closer to 3%.

On use, it is not close. The St. Louis Fed’s Real-Time Population Survey found 39.4% of US adults aged 18 to 64 had used generative AI by August 2024, less than two years after ChatGPT launched — a faster start than the personal computer or the internet had on the authors’ comparison. By that measure, AI’s bar to 2% would be measured in months, and by 2024 it was most of the way to 50%.

So the fair reading is narrower than “AI is at year zero.” Paid AI is at year zero. And it got to the starting line faster than anything else on the chart.

The time before 2% is when the tools are clumsy, expensive and used by people who don’t mind that. It is also when the habits form. The agents who were on BlackBerrys in 2003 were not smarter than everyone else; they just had four extra years of practice running a business from a phone when the iPhone made it normal.

Paying for AI is where real estate is now. Most agents have tried ChatGPT; few have built it into how listings, follow-up and market updates actually get done. If the smartphone pattern holds — long incubation, then a fast climb — the agents doing that work today are buying the same head start.

1. Ruben Hassid (How to AI) — “From 2% to half of America,” X, October 4, 2026
2. a16z — State of Markets II (PNC household AI-subscription chart)
3. TechDogs — Only 2.2% of PNC households pay for GenAI (PNC Consumer Report, June 2026)
4. Bank of America Institute via CBS12 — Can consumers support AI? Just 3% of households are paying subscribers
5. Bick, Blandin and Deming — The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI (NBER Working Paper 32966)
6. OpenAI — Introducing ChatGPT Plus (February 1, 2023)
7. Federal Highway Administration — State motor vehicle registrations, 1900–1995
8. Duryea Motor Wagon Company
9. Altair 8800
10. The World (internet service provider)
11. Pew Research Center (Times Mirror) — Americans Going Online… Explosive Growth, Uncertain Destinations (October 16, 1995)
12. IBM Simon
13. Prodigy (online service) — subscriber history
14. CompuServe — subscriber history (Encyclopedia.com company profile)
15. MMA / Telephia — Americans lag behind Europeans in smartphone adoption (2006)