A leaked email from OpenAI’s COO, Brad Lightcap, has revealed that ChatGPT has surpassed 10 million paying subscribers, along with an additional 1 million users on enterprise plans, as reported by The Information.
Although these figures have not been officially confirmed by OpenAI, they suggest a monthly revenue exceeding $225 million, translating to more than $2.7 billion annually (around R$15 billion), based on subscription pricing.
While OpenAI hasn’t disclosed the total subscriber numbers, it has recently shared that its enterprise offerings, including ChatGPT Team, ChatGPT Enterprise, and ChatGPT Edu, have collectively surpassed 1 million paying subscribers. The company noted that nearly half of its enterprise users are based in the United States.
High operating cost
Despite its expanding user base, ChatGPT faces significant operating costs. Analysts interviewed by The Information last year estimated that running the chatbot could cost up to $700,000 per day, largely due to the heavy reliance on expensive servers.
Since this estimate was based on the earlier GPT-3.5 model, it’s likely that operating costs have increased with the introduction of more advanced models like GPT-4o and the newly announced o1.
According to The Information, these high expenses could lead to a loss of up to $5 billion for OpenAI in 2024. Furthermore, the company may spend as much as $7 billion this year on training and operating ChatGPT.
OpenAI releases o1 model.
On Thursday, OpenAI launched o1, its latest artificial intelligence model designed to tackle complex problems like coding and mathematical queries more effectively.
The company emphasized that this new AI stands out by using a “chain of thought” approach when processing user commands. This means that o1 “thinks” through multiple steps before responding, allowing it to analyze information and provide more accurate answers.
