I think that is worth a celebration cake or something, and its only for those who have opt-in for analytics:
That alone shows Home Assistant adoption has come a long way since 100,000 in November of 2021:
Do you all think Home Assistant adoption will continue to grow at the same rate as it has in the past?
…around 7,000 each month on average or thereabouts, so maybe 500,000 in about 3 years from now?
I sure hope so. My YouTube channel needs more subscribers! 
In my vision of the future, I’d bet on an even faster growth. It’s just a guess, sure, but I think, home automation is something, that will even get more and more attention. The manufacturers invest in smart devices, because they can sell them for more money - plays right into the hand of HA.
I think, there is a “critical mass” where you reach attention in the press, on television, social media. For now, in it’s majority it’s the “techy” corners of all that, but I’m quite sure, the change is already underway. I saw the mention of HA in one of our big and countrywide TV broadcasters, that’s the first step.
@MissyQ do you plan to do something special to celebrate and do a another opt-in analytics promotion high-light blog-post when you hit 500,000 active installations of Home Assistant in a few months time or will you wait until you hit the 1,000,000 mark in a few fears?
I suspct there might be an extra bump of active users this holiday season as people gets an Home Assistant Green for christmas 
and the graph already illustrates exponential growth potential anyway:
Aha! I am not sure yet if we do have something in the works for that, but I will bring it up to the team. I fully believe we should!
Just my guess but I believe that Home Assistant analytics is very likely to see 500,000 active installations of Home Assistant before Q3 (July) in 2025 → https://analytics.home-assistant.io
That guesstimate is based on a combination of many things that are now all coming together with many stars alining, and I therefore believe it is only a matter of time before the userbase hits critial mass so that word of mouth will soon be enough to potentially produce much steeper exponential growth of the whole Home Assistant project and community. The only thing is missing now is for enough new users finding Home Assistant via various news articles and vlog/blog reviews about how easy and/or interesting it is to get started with Home Assistant.
Might be more but I know of these things lined up to make more people write/talk about Home Assistant:
There is already an exponential growth curve - https://analytics.home-assistant.io
Some vloggers/bloggers in the Home Assistant Creator Network has begun to make and pubish more videos and blog-posts that target beginners and those that has not even started with Home Assistant which should attract more new users → Creator Network
Home Assistant again leading the GitHub charts of open-source projects should attract more new developers which hopefully will make Home Assistant better and that in turn will attract more users which is likely to create a good lifecycle and possitive community growth. - > Event wrap-up - GitHub Universe '24 - Home Assistant
Home Assistant Green now being available from more resellers online and even sold by some retailers in brick-and-mortar stores. → Home Assistant Green - Home Assistant
The upcoming official Home Assistant Smart Speaker (voice assistant appliance) which will put again put Home Assistant in the highlight of the media and the press. Please make sure to milk the press/media for all they are worth regarding that! 
→ Talking with Home Assistant - get your system up & running - Home Assistant
Music Assistant native integration and its continued development + the upcoming official Home Assistant Smart Speaker (voice assistant appliance) should in theory combined attract new users that might be primarly interested in controlling music playback via open-source software and hardware, so hopefully that will be highelighted more too via its on series of articles(?) → Music Assistant 2.0: Your Music, Your Players - Home Assistant
Home Assistant partner program is slowly gaining traction which will point new users stumbleing onto those products to → https://partner.home-assistant.io/
Ongoing work on productification and open source product development with public roadmap and more transparency around that + allowing open participation and community feedback should make the community feel more a part of the project and development → Roadmap 2024 Year-end Update: Full steam ahead! - Home Assistant
Ongoing work on Home Assisant’s frontend and Home Assistant’s Companion App’s for iOS and Android to lower the point-of-entry for new users by making it easier to get started and simpler to do most things from the UI (or at least less complicated to do from the web user interface).
The popularity of IoT and home automation is growing in general, still publicly powered by the marketing done by giant companies, today especially done by the megacorporation behind the Matter standard, i.e. Amazon, Google, Samsung, and Apple, (even if most of the new product inovation today are driven by open-source communities and hobby projects done by individuals).
I do not want to underestimate word of mouth but all in all I think that more news articles are written and published in the press/media when something specific that is new happens (like new hardware products) and vloggers/bloggers showing of new features or projects that is happening with or around Home Assistant should hopefully attract more new users faster than anything.