The growth stage of the product life cycle is the second of its four stages, when sales climb fast because buyers beyond the early adopters of the introduction stage start buying. Unit costs usually fall as volume builds, and competitors enter because the market has proved itself.
The growth stage examples below are current as of September 2026.
A product is in the growth stage when its sales rise fast on new customers.
In the maturity stage the money comes instead from people who already own the product, through price rises and upgrades.
Sales - The growth rate holds or rises even as the base gets bigger. Watch the rate, not the total.
Competition - Entrants are often far bigger than the companies already in the market. Samsung moving into smart rings is the typical case.
Pricing - Price per unit falls, and cheaper tiers appear to reach the next group of buyers. Starlink's revenue per subscriber fell while its subscriber count doubled.
Marketing - Spend moves from explaining the category to winning share inside it, and it usually goes up.
In the growth stage, strategy moves from proving the product to scaling it and holding share as rivals arrive.
Product - Add variants and features so the product suits buyers who aren't early adopters. Oura's Ring 5 and Tesla's cheaper Model 3 variants are this move.
Price - Price for share once unit costs allow it, but keep the premium where your product is clearly better.
Place - Distribution widens fast, through new countries, retailers, carriers and marketplaces. Apple grew the early iPhone partly by adding carriers in new countries.
Promotion - Put the comparison against named rivals up front, the way the AI app builder Lovable runs a comparison page against its rival Bolt.
Differentiation is the main strategic question in this stage. Pick the one or two things you'll be better at than the entrants, and check them against the Kano model in these product strategy frameworks, because a delighter becomes a basic need once rivals copy it.
Growth stage examples in 2026 include AI coding agents, enterprise AI agents, AI app builders, GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, smart rings, AI glasses, Starlink, Waymo and AI data center chips, with AI chat assistants the closest to maturity.
I think AI coding agents show the growth stage in their numbers more clearly than any other software category. Anthropic said Claude Code's run-rate revenue went from over $500 million in September 2025 to over $2.5 billion by February 2026, and OpenAI said in June 2026 that Codex had more than 5 million weekly active users.
The fight now is over pricing. Microsoft said growing GitHub Copilot usage weighed on its Intelligent Cloud gross margins, though margins improved through the quarter with the June 2026 switch to usage-based pricing.
Consolidation has started too, with SpaceX acquiring Cursor in August 2026 while usage is still climbing.
Salesforce unveiled Agentforce in September 2024, and in August 2026 it said Agentforce annual recurring revenue had exceeded $1.5 billion, up over 240% year over year.
Salesforce widened what the Agentforce metric counts that quarter, so treat the jump from May's $1.2 billion with care. ServiceNow said its AI products crossed $1 billion in annual contract value in Q2 2026.
Salesforce announced pay-per-resolution pricing for its Help Agent in June 2026. In September it closed its roughly $3.6 billion purchase of Fin, formerly Intercom.
I read both as growth-stage moves. Pricing per resolution lets more buyers start, and buying Fin gets Salesforce a rival's customers instead of waiting to win them.
AI chat assistants are still adding users at enormous scale, but they sit closer to maturity than anything else here. Google said in August 2026 that the Gemini app had passed 1 billion monthly users, up from over 650 million monthly active users in October 2025. OpenAI said that month that ChatGPT has more than 1 billion weekly active users.
The leader is losing share. Sensor Tower says ChatGPT's share of unique users across app and web fell below 50% for the first time in March 2026 as Gemini and Claude gained. TechCrunch, citing Sensor Tower estimates, reports that download and spending growth for AI apps has slowed.
OpenAI rolled out a cheaper tier, ChatGPT Go, worldwide in January 2026 at $8 a month in the US, and began testing ads on the Free and Go tiers in the US in February.
AI app builders turn a written description into working software. Lovable launched in November 2024. It said it passed $100 million in ARR in July 2025 and doubled that to $200 million four months later, in November. By September 28, 2026, more than 70 million projects had been created with it.
The Place move is selling to businesses through Microsoft, to reach buyers beyond the early adopters. Replit announced a Microsoft partnership in July 2025, Bolt said in May 2026 that it would be available through Microsoft Marketplace, and Lovable announced in September 2026 that it's working with Microsoft so apps built with it run inside a company's own Microsoft tenant.
Eli Lilly's revenue rose 48% to $23.0 billion in Q2 2026, driven primarily by Mounjaro and Zepbound volume. Across the company, a 60% rise in volume was partly offset by a 13% fall in realized prices, which is the growth-stage trade of price for volume.
Rivals now compete on format. Novo Nordisk announced FDA approval of its Wegovy pill on December 22, 2025, and Lilly's Foundayo was approved about three months later, on April 1, 2026.
In August 2026 Novo raised its outlook but still guides adjusted 2026 sales between flat and down 6% at constant exchange rates, and cites lower realized prices and intensifying competition. It plans to cut the US list price of Wegovy by about 50% from January 1, 2027.
Oura's preliminary IPO prospectus from September 2026 shows paid members up from 2.5 million to 5.0 million in the year to June 30, 2026, and nine-month revenue up 74% to $1.2 billion. Gross margin rose from 51% to 55%, which Oura puts down mainly to lower warranty rates and lower per-unit manufacturing costs.
Samsung entered in July 2024 with the Galaxy Ring, priced from $399.99 in the US with no subscription. Oura's filing says lower-cost smart rings and other wearables, some with no subscription fee, create pricing pressure.
Oura is spending heavily to keep growing. It launched Oura Ring 5 in June 2026, and its nine-month sales and marketing costs rose 84%.
EssilorLuxottica sold more than 7 million AI glasses in 2025, including Ray-Ban Meta, launched in September 2023, and Oakley Meta. Its AI glasses sales almost doubled year over year in Q2 2026. Both figures cover its whole range, the newer display model included.
The price range is getting wider. In June 2026 Meta and EssilorLuxottica added a Meta Glasses line starting at $299, which EssilorLuxottica pitched at more price-sensitive consumers. Meta's September 2026 announcement added a model starting at $249, which it called its most accessible price yet, alongside Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 from $449.
Alibaba launched its camera-first Quark G1 in China in November 2025, and said in March 2026 that it plans an international version for release within 2026.
SpaceX's filings show Starlink subscribers, which it counts as service lines, doubling from 6.0 million to 12.0 million in the year to June 30, 2026. In Q2 2026 average revenue per subscriber fell 22.4% year over year to $66 a month, which SpaceX attributes primarily to international expansion and cheaper plans.
SpaceX says its strategy focuses on revenue growth and margins rather than on raising revenue per subscriber. It also said the average cost to make a Starlink Kit fell about 59% between 2022 and March 2026.
Amazon Leo, Amazon's rival network and formerly Project Kuiper, was still in a private preview in September 2026, with initial service expected later in the year.
Waymo said it more than tripled its annual ride volume to 15 million in 2025, and Alphabet said in April 2026 that Waymo had passed 500,000 fully autonomous rides a week, doubling in less than a year. By mid-September it served commercial trips in 15 major US cities.
Tesla launched its Robotaxi service in Austin in June 2025, and Zoox won federal approval to charge for rides in July 2026.
Waymo says its 6th-generation Driver drives down costs and is built for high-volume production, and it raised $16 billion in February 2026 to fund the expansion.
The number I'd watch is weekly rides. Waymo still described them as "over half a million" in September 2026, the same floor Alphabet gave in April, against a goal of over one million a week by the end of 2026.
NVIDIA's Data Center revenue was $89.0 billion in the quarter to July 26, 2026, up 117% year over year. A year earlier that line was growing 56%, as reported at the time, so growth sped up at a much bigger base.
Amazon said its own chips business passed a $25 billion annual revenue run rate. AMD said it will begin shipping its Helios rack to customers, including Microsoft, in the second half of 2026.
NVIDIA pitches cost per output, claiming its Rubin platform cuts inference token cost by up to 10x compared with Blackwell.
It's the textbook growth curve. Apple sold about 11.6 million iPhones in fiscal 2008 and 125.0 million in fiscal 2012, with unit sales growing 73% to 93% a year.
New models and wider distribution drove it. The 8GB iPhone 3G launched at $199 with a new two-year AT&T contract in July 2008, and by September 2010 Apple distributed iPhone in 89 countries through 166 carriers.
I'd say Apple's defense against Android was the ecosystem. The App Store opened in July 2008 with more than 500 apps.
Tesla's Model 3 ramp shows growth hiding problems. Tesla started deliveries on July 28, 2017, and aimed for a run rate of 5,000 cars a week by the end of that year, but made only 260 in the third quarter, which it blamed on production bottlenecks. It first built 5,031 in a week in the last seven days of Q2 2018.
Deliveries went from 1,550 in Q4 2017 to 63,150 in Q4 2018, and Tesla said labor hours per Model 3 fell about 65% in the second half of 2018. More than three quarters of Q4 2018 orders came from new customers rather than reservation holders.
A lower-priced mid-range variant followed in Q4 2018, then a $35,000 standard Model 3 in February 2019.
AI is shrinking the head start a growth-stage leader gets, because competitors can now ship a comparable product within weeks or months.
Anthropic put Claude Code into a limited research preview on February 24, 2025. OpenAI released Codex CLI, which it called an experiment, 51 days later, and Google launched Gemini CLI in preview 121 days after Claude Code.
Compare that with the iPhone, which went on sale on June 29, 2007. The first Android-powered phone was announced about 15 months later.
I think the lead that holds comes from distribution and from depth a copycat can't ship quickly.
For a business, the same speed means a vendor can often match AI you build for your own operations within months, which is why I'd buy first and build only the gap.
The most common mistakes in the growth stage are pushing price up too early and answering every copycat with a parity feature.
Price - Netflix split its combined DVD and streaming plan in July 2011, a price rise of as much as 60% for subscribers who used both. By the third quarter its unique US subscribers had fallen to 23.8 million, and Netflix said it had stalled its domestic growth.
Parity features - A rival's feature is only worth copying if customers are leaving for it. Check churn and lost-deal reasons before it goes on the roadmap.
In the growth stage, a product manager should focus on keeping retention and unit economics healthy while the product scales.
Track retention by cohort. If each new cohort churns faster than the last, stop scaling acquisition until you know why.
If you haven't worked with retention metrics before, I'd learn the AARRR funnel metrics (acquisition, activation, retention, referral, revenue) from a product management course before setting targets for each cohort.
Know your cost to serve at the volume you're heading for. For an AI product that means cost per task, not cost per seat.
Protect room on the product roadmap for scale work. The shortcuts you took to launch come due now, so budget for the testing and maintenance phases of the SDLC before a bigger customer finds the gaps for you.
RELATED READING
The product life cycle (PLC) is the series of steps through which every product goes. Product life cycle stages - Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline.
The introduction stage of the product life cycle is the launch period, when a product is newly available, or about to be, and almost nobody beyond early adopters has used it. Sales are small and…
Choosing the right product strategy framework is very important for every product manager. We will go over some top models like Kano, OKR, Hooked, etc. The same frameworks apply when you're shaping…
Why are you building? What are you building? These two questions form the basis of any good product roadmap. Learn how to create the best product roadmap.
This is my list of the product management courses and certifications that are worth your time, updated for 2026. AI product management programs now lead the list. Once you've picked a course and…
The build vs buy decision is older than AI. Every IT shop has had this conversation about every internal system since the 1990s. The AI version has a few new wrinkles but most of the framework is…
FREQUENTLY ASKED