ChatGPT Surges to 400 Million Weekly Users, Doubling Its User Base in 6 Months

ChatGPT's user base just doubled in 6 months - to more than 400 million weekly users

Also: OpenAI's new Deep Research agent can do in 5 minutes what might take you hours More than 400 million people use ChatGPT each week, Reuters says, a number that has doubled since last August, when it had 200 million weekly users. The service had 300 million weekly users last December, meaning it grew 33% in just over two months. ChatGPT quickly made a name for itself after its November 2022 debut, thanks to its advanced writing capabilities, such as composing emails, essays, resumes, and lists, giving it early brand recognition. Since then, its proficiency in STEM tasks, like writing and debugging code, has made it stand out even more (and given it the top spot on our list of best AI chatbots). In addition, OpenAI is consistently adding new features to ChatGPT, like LLM GPT-4, which introduced web browsing, vision, data analysis, and file uploads. Also: Are ChatGPT Plus or Pro worth it? Here's how they compare to the free version If you're not among those 400 million people and need a little inspiration, you should know that ChatGPT goes far beyond conversation and has plenty of uses for both professional and personal needs. You can use it to create apps, write Excel formulas, build a resume, do research for papers, plan your vacation, and more. In a post on X about the milestone, OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap said his company was "very fortunate to serve 5% of the world every week" and pointed out that more than two million business users now use ChatGPT at work. GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 will be available to chat with soon, he said, with unlimited GPT-5 for free users. Also: OpenAI's reasoning models just got two useful updates Lightcap called ChatGPT's growth a "natural progression," adding that "People hear about it through word of mouth. They see the utility of it. They see their friends using it." "There's an overall effect of people really wanting these tools," he said, "and seeing that these tools are really valuable."

ChatGPT reaches 400M weekly active users

The AI assistant doubled its base again despite challenges from DeepSeek. ChatGPT has surpassed 400 million weekly active users. "We feel very fortunate to serve 5 percent of the world every week," OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap on X about the new audience stat. This figure is twice the weekly active user count reported by the company in , which was double the figure it posted in November 2023. The latest milestone for the AI assistant comes after a huge uproar over new rival platform earlier in the year, which raised questions about whether the current crop of leading AI tools was about to be dethroned. OpenAI is on the verge of a move to simplify its ChatGPT offerings so that users won't have to select which reasoning model will respond to an input, and it will make its GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 models available soon in the chat and API clients. With GPT-5 being made available to OpenAI's free users, ChatGPT seems primed to continue expanding its audience base in the coming months.

What's Behind OpenAI's Recent Growth Spurt to 400M Weekly Users?

ChatGPT maker OpenAI says more than 400 million people a week are now actively using its artificial intelligence tools, a jump from the 300 million it reported this past December. OpenAI touted the figure this week, also telling media outlets that it's doubled its number of paid enterprise users to 2 million since September, and that its developer traffic has also doubled in the last six months. The news may come as a surprise to some who expected the rise of China's DeepSeek AI model, which made waves last month with high-profile claims of more efficient model design and free-to-use tiers, to disrupt the growth of more established companies working on generative AI. OpenAI's ChatGPT has become wildly popular as a top tool for generative AI and is used by individuals and businesses for a wide variety of tasks. But it's one of several GenAI tools in an increasingly competitive space that includes offerings such as Apple Intelligence, Meta AI, Google's Gemini, Microsoft's Copilot (Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI), Anthropic's Claude and others. The debut of DeepSeek pointed to the possibility that there may be other up-and-coming challengers to the AI throne that are not as costly and are more efficient than the more-established AI models. But DeepSeek has also had issues with cyberattacks and outages. OpenAI's chief operating officer Brad Lightcap told CNBC that some of the growth of ChatGPT is coming from word-of-mouth among consumers. "They see the utility of it. They see their friends using it," Lightcap said. "There's an overall effect of people really wanting these tools, and seeing that these tools are really valuable." The COO said that enterprise growth is being helped by usage from non-business customers, and that OpenAI expects that many companies will come to rely on AI services the way they do cloud computing. Others in the industry are closely watching how this plays out for ChatGPT and whether the company will keep its dominance. Dmitry Zakharchenko, chief software officer at Blaize, an AI computer hardware company based in El Dorado Hills, California, is among those closely watching how the AI war will play out. Zakharchenko says the AI landscape has changed drastically since six months ago when the prevailing belief was that in a few years there wouldn't be enough electrical energy to power AI's exponentially growing needs. "DeepSeek sent a signal to the AI market that the trend of impossible costs is now officially over," Zakharchenko said. "The market received the signal, and OpenAI started to message that they are getting smaller and will continue to be, thawing the budgets and re-invigorating the GenAI spend." He says that DeepSeek had the opposite effect of hurting OpenAI, which already had a foothold with users. "With users now knowing that small AI is already here, they are confident that OpenAI will start to reduce prices (and they did), they will focus on smaller AI, and they will open themselves up as DeepSeek is open source."

ChatGPT's reports surge to 400 mn weekly users

NEW YORK (AFP) - Artificial intelligence powerhouse OpenAI has seen its weekly active users jump 33 per cent to 400 million since December, the company said on Thursday. The San Francisco-based creator of ChatGPT also reported that its enterprise customer base has doubled to two million paying users since September, highlighting rapid adoption of AI tools across the business sector. The company, which rocked the tech world with its release of its chatbot in 2022, however did not update the latest data for its Plus and Pro offerings, which charge customers USD20 and USD200 respectively. "People hear about it through word of mouth. They see the utility of it. They see their friends using it," chief operating officer Brad Lightcap said in an interview with CNBC. The figures come as OpenAI faces new competition from Chinese rival DeepSeek and legal challenges from OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, who recently sued the company over its move to convert to a for-profit entity. The proliferation of models and chatbots has sown doubt that the companies will be able to book a return on the massive investments needed to train the models. Musk also released his AI company's latest ChatGPT rival Grok 3 on Monday. OpenAI is currently in talks with SoftBank for a potential USD40 billion investment that could value the Microsoft-backed company at approximately USD300 billion, according to CNBC. The company dismissed a recent USD97.4 billion bid from Musk and other investors to purchase its nonprofit assets, with OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor stating that the company "is not for sale."

ChatGPT is back! OpenAI weekly users hit 400 million. Check ChatGPT Plus, Pro cost

ChatGPT from OpenAI has witnessed weekly user base growing to 400 million.Artificial intelligence powerhouse OpenAI has seen its weekly active users jump 33 percent to 400 million since December, the company said on Thursday. The San Francisco-based creator of ChatGPT also reported that its enterprise customer base has doubled to two million paying users since September, highlighting rapid adoption of AI tools across the business sector, as per a report. The company, which rocked the tech world with its release of its chatbot in 2022, however did not update the latest data for its Plus and Pro offerings, which charge customers $20 and $200 respectively, AFP reported. "People hear about it through word of mouth. They see the utility of it. They see their friends using it," chief operating officer Brad Lightcap said in an interview with CNBC. The figures come as OpenAI faces new competition from Chinese rival DeepSeek and legal challenges from OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, who recently sued the company over its move to convert to a for-profit entity. The proliferation of models and chatbots has sown doubt that the companies will be able to book a return on the massive investments needed to train the models. Musk also released his AI company's latest ChatGPT rival Grok 3 on Monday. OpenAI is currently in talks with SoftBank for a potential $40 billion investment that could value the Microsoft-backed company at approximately $300 billion, according to CNBC. The company dismissed a recent $97.4 billion bid from Musk and other investors to purchase its nonprofit assets, with OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor stating that the company "is not for sale." Q1. What are charges of ChatGPT Plus and Pro? A1. ChatGPT Plus and Pro charge customers $20 and $200 respectively. Q2. Was there any recent investment from ChatGPT? A2. OpenAI ChatGPT dismissed a recent $97.4 billion bid from Musk and other investors to purchase its nonprofit assets, with OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor stating that the company "is not for sale."

ChatGPT Surpasses 400 Million Weekly Active Users, OpenAI Plans GPT-5 Launch

"We feel very fortunate to serve 5% of the world every week," Lightcap said in a recent post on X. He also noted a fivefold increase in reasoning model API usage since the launch of OpenAI's o3 mini model. "2M+ business users now use Chatgpt at work, and reasoning model API use is up 5x since the o3 mini launch," he said. OpenAI is preparing to introduce GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 to ChatGPT and the API. Lightcap confirmed that free-tier users will have unlimited access to GPT-5, while Plus users will have the option to operate at "even higher intelligence." "GPT-5 will unify our GPT and o-series models into a single powerful model -- we think even low-taste testers will love it," he added. OpenAI also plans to expand ChatGPT's agent capabilities this year, alongside other updates yet to be disclosed. OpenAI's growth comes as it faces new competition from China's DeepSeek, which unsettled tech markets in January over concerns about its impact on U.S. AI companies' profitability and dominance. Meanwhile, OpenAI chief Sam Altman is considering whether OpenaI should open-source its next AI project. Altman asked users on X whether they prefer an o3-mini-level model or a phone-sized version. "For our next open-source project, would it be more useful to create an o3-mini-level model, which is relatively small but still requires GPUs, or the best phone-sized model we can develop?" Altman asked in a poll on X. OpenAI is facing stiff competition from its competitors. xAI recently launched Grok-3 and made it freely available to all the users. Grok is currently the No. 1 app on the app store, surpassing ChatGPT and DeepSeek. Independent benchmarks showed that Grok 3 outperformed Google Gemini 2 Pro, DeepSeek V3, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and GPT-4 in tests such as AIME, GPQA, and LCB. Meanwhile, Anthropic is preparing to launch its next reasoning model, a hybrid AI that will allocate more computational power to complex queries while efficiently handling simpler tasks.

OpenAI's ChatGPT explodes to 400M weekly users, with GPT-5 on the way

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI's ChatGPT has surpassed 400 million weekly active users, a milestone that underscores the company's growing reach across both consumer and enterprise markets, according to an X.com post from Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap on Thursday. The rapid expansion comes as OpenAI faces intensifying competition from rivals such as Elon Musk's xAI and China's DeepSeek, both of which have recently launched high-performing models aimed at disrupting OpenAI's dominance. Despite this, OpenAI has seen significant traction in the business sector, with more than two million enterprise users now leveraging ChatGPT at work -- doubling from September 2024. "ChatGPT recently crossed 400M WAU, we feel very fortunate to serve 5% of the world every week," Lightcap wrote. He also noted that usage of OpenAI's reasoning model API has surged fivefold since the launch of its o3 Mini model, which is designed to enhance logical inference and structured problem-solving capabilities. AI is reshaping the workplace: 2 million businesses now rely on ChatGPT The surge in enterprise adoption represents a crucial validation of OpenAI's strategy to position ChatGPT as not just a chatbot for casual queries, but as a serious productivity tool for businesses. Companies such as Morgan Stanley, Uber, and T-Mobile have integrated OpenAI's models into their workflows, using AI to generate reports, automate customer service, and streamline decision-making. Notably, OpenAI's progress comes amid heightened scrutiny over the role of generative AI in business-critical applications. The company recently secured its first federal agency customer, USAID, which is deploying ChatGPT Enterprise to reduce administrative burdens and streamline partnerships, according to FedScoop. The expansion into government contracts suggests OpenAI is succeeding in navigating the regulatory hurdles that have slowed AI adoption in public-sector institutions. At the same time, OpenAI is deepening its presence in Japan through a joint venture with SoftBank, dubbed SB OpenAI Japan. The partnership, which involves a $3 billion annual investment from SoftBank, aims to integrate OpenAI's technology into major Japanese enterprises, with initial deployments inside SoftBank's own ecosystem, including its semiconductor subsidiary Arm and digital payments platform PayPay. GPT-5 is coming: OpenAI's next leap in artificial intelligence Lightcap also revealed that OpenAI is preparing to launch GPT-4.5 and GPT-5, with the latter set to merge the company's GPT and O-series models into a single, more powerful system. "We'll bring GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 to chat and the API soon, with unlimited GPT-5 for free users (plus users can run at even higher intelligence)," he wrote. This move signals OpenAI's ambition to consolidate its AI offerings into a unified model that can handle both general conversational AI tasks and more specialized reasoning-based applications. By integrating the capabilities of its flagship GPT models with the structured problem-solving of the O-series, OpenAI is betting that a one-model-to-rule-them-all approach will give it a competitive edge over rivals that are still segmenting their AI offerings. The timing of the GPT-5 release is particularly critical. Musk's xAI recently introduced Grok-3, a model that the company claims outperforms OpenAI's GPT-4o in certain benchmarks, including math, science, and coding. Meanwhile, DeepSeek's rapid rise in China has added pressure on OpenAI to maintain its lead in AI sophistication and accessibility. The AI wars: OpenAI, xAI, and DeepSeek battle for global dominance OpenAI's expansion comes at a moment of fierce competition in the AI sector, with rival companies racing to secure market share in both consumer and enterprise applications. Musk, who co-founded OpenAI before departing in 2018, has been vocal about his concerns regarding the company's shift toward a for-profit model. The billionaire recently launched an unsolicited $97 billion bid to take control of OpenAI, a move that was swiftly rejected by the company's board. OpenAI has since positioned itself as the leader in enterprise AI deployments, with Microsoft's backing providing both financial stability and cloud infrastructure. Meanwhile, DeepSeek has disrupted the market with low-cost, open-source AI models that have gained traction, particularly among developers wary of OpenAI's pricing model. The Chinese firm has claimed that it trained its latest model for under $6 million -- an order of magnitude lower than what OpenAI and xAI are spending on comparable systems. What's next for OpenAI? The future of AI in business and beyond OpenAI's latest user metrics suggest that the company is still expanding at a rapid clip despite the mounting competition. The leap from 300 million to 400 million weekly active users in just three months indicates that demand for AI-powered tools continues to grow, with businesses increasingly integrating them into their everyday operations. The launch of GPT-5 will be a crucial test of OpenAI's ability to maintain its leadership in AI. If the model delivers on promises of higher reasoning capability, better personalization, and improved efficiency, it could cement OpenAI's position as the go-to provider for both consumer and enterprise AI applications. However, with Musk's xAI, DeepSeek, and Google's Gemini models all vying for dominance, OpenAI cannot afford to slow down. The next 12 months will likely determine whether it remains the uncontested leader in generative AI, or whether a new player will disrupt the balance of power in artificial intelligence.

OpenAI reaches 400M weekly active users, doubles enterprise customer base - SiliconANGLE

OpenAI reaches 400M weekly active users, doubles enterprise customer base OpenAI today disclosed that ChatGPT and its other products have more than 400 million active weekly users, a 33% increase from December. OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap (pictured) told CNBC that the company's paying customer base is growing rapidly as well. The ChatGPT developer currently has two million paying enterprise users, twice as many as in September. OpenAI's continued user growth might make it easier for the company to close the $40 billion funding round that it's believed to be raising. Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported that SoftBank Group Corp. is helping the artificial intelligence provider find investors. The Japanese tech giant is expected to lead the round with a commitment of up to $25 billion. The investment could more than double OpenAI's current valuation to $340 billion, according to the report. While the company's user base growth may prove conducive to the fundraising push, it could complicate its efforts to become profitable. The more users sign up for ChatGPT, the more OpenAI has to spend on hardware to meet demand. The New York Times reported in September that the company was expecting to end 2024 with a $5 billion loss on sales of $3.7 billion. OpenAI hoped to generate a profit with ChatGPT Pro, a premium version of its ChatGPT that launched in December. It provides access to the company's Operator task automation tool and several other benefits. ChatGPT Pro costs ten times as much as the second priciest consumer tier of ChatGPT, but OpenAI is nonetheless losing money on the product. ChatGPT Pro provides unlimited access to the company's hardware-intensive reasoning models. Additionally, there's a deep research mode that boosts the quality of prompt responses by increasing the amount of infrastructure used to generate them. The hardware costs associated with those features are likely among the reasons that ChatGPT Pro isn't profitable. In today's CNBC interview, Lightcap detailed that OpenAI is seeing increased demand for not only ChatGPT but also its application programming interfaces. The executive detailed that developer traffic has doubled in the past six months. Usage of o3 is up fivefold. Introduced in December, o3 is a large language model optimized for reasoning tasks. To demonstrate its capabilities, OpenAI had the model tackle one of the industry's most complicated AI math benchmarks in an internal test. The company says that o3 achieved a score ten times higher than the previous record-holder. The fivefold demand increase that Lightcap disclosed today was presumably achieved by o3-mini, the only version of o3 that is currently available for developers. It's a scaled-down edition of the original that trades off some output quality for faster performance and lower inference costs.

ChatGPT's weekly user base has exceeded the entire US population

Beyond consumer adoption, OpenAI's enterprise business is also expanding rapidly. The company now has two million paying enterprise users, doubling from September, as employees increasingly recommend ChatGPT for workplace use. Companies like Uber, Morgan Stanley, Moderna, and T-Mobile have integrated OpenAI's technology into their operations, contributing to growing developer traffic. According to Lightcap, developer usage has doubled in the past six months, with OpenAI's "reasoning" model o3 seeing a fivefold increase in activity. Lightcap compared the adoption of AI to the rise of cloud services, predicting that AI will soon become an indispensable backbone for businesses.

OpenAI tops 400 million users despite DeepSeek's emergence

"There's an overall effect of people really wanting these tools, and seeing that these tools are really valuable," Lightcap said. OpenAI appears to be growing quickly despite increasing competition. The San Francisco-based tech company had 400 million weekly active users as of February, up 33% from 300 million in December, the company's chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, told CNBC. These numbers have not been previously reported. Lightcap pointed to the "natural progression" of ChatGPT as it becomes more useful and familiar to a broader group of people. "People hear about it through word of mouth. They see the utility of it. They see their friends using it," Lightcap said in an interview, adding that it takes time for individuals to find use cases that resonate. "There's an overall effect of people really wanting these tools, and seeing that these tools are really valuable." OpenAI is seeing that spill over to its growing enterprise business. The company now has 2 million paying enterprise users, roughly doubling from September, said Lightcap, pointing out that often employees will use ChatGPT personally and suggest to their companies that they implement the tool. "We get a lot of benefits, and a tail wind from the organic consumer adoption where people already have familiarity with the product," he said. "There's really healthy growth, on a different curve." Developer traffic has also doubled in the past six months, quintupling for the company's "reasoning" model o3, according to Lightcap. Developers use OpenAI to integrate the technology into their own applications. OpenAI counts Uber, Morgan Stanley, Moderna and T-Mobile among some of its largest enterprise customers. Lightcap likened this usage to cloud services, which Amazon Web Services pioneered two decades ago. While the consumer business may grow faster since people can adopt it at will, enterprise is in the "process of building up," he said. "There's a buying cycle there, and a learning process that goes into scaling an enterprise business," Lightcap said. "AI is going to be like cloud services. It's going to be something that you can't run a business that ultimately is not really running on these very powerful models underneath the surface."

OpenAI now serves 400M users every week | TechCrunch

OpenAI is increasingly looking like a consumer company, telling CNBC that it now has 400 million weekly active users. Usage is still growing at a rapid pace as the AI developer behind the AI chatbot, ChatGPT, "only" had 300 million users in December 2024. Though OpenAI has not revealed the number of paid customers with an active subscription to ChatGPT Plus or ChatGPT Pro. On the B2B front, ChatGPT's enterprise plans are growing nicely: OpenAI now has 2 million paying enterprise users -- with the usage figure doubling since September 2024. As for OpenAI's developer APIs, the company said that its developer traffic has doubled in the past six months. It's interesting to note that OpenAI shared these metrics just a few weeks after China's DeepSeek released rival tech: an AI model, a reasoning model, and an AI assistant app. OpenAI is keen to demonstrate that its business is thriving -- thank you for asking.

OpenAI's weekly active users surpass 400 million

(Reuters) - ChatGPT developer OpenAI's weekly active users surged past 400 million in February, a company spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday, highlighting rapid growth in the adoption of artificial intelligence tools. The Microsoft-backed startup had 300 million weekly active users in December. Its paying business users also crossed 2 million in February, more than doubling from its last update in September. The upbeat numbers come weeks after China's DeepSeek launched an AI model it said could match or even outperform Western rivals at a fraction of the cost, stirring doubts about U.S. dominance in the generative AI space. But a surge in demand for DeepSeek since then has caused outages at the small startup. There have also been questions around how DeepSeek was able to obtain Nvidia's H800 chips, used to train AI models, even though Washington had banned their exports to China. OpenAI reported a twofold increase in developer traffic for its reasoning models over the last six months and a fivefold surge for its o3 model since its launch in late January. The news about OpenAI's weekly users was first reported by CNBC earlier in the day. (Reporting by Rishi Kant in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)

OpenAI's Weekly Active Users Surpass 400 Million

(Reuters) - ChatGPT developer OpenAI's weekly active users surged past 400 million in February, a company spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday, highlighting rapid growth in the adoption of artificial intelligence tools. The Microsoft-backed startup had 300 million weekly active users in December. Its paying business users also crossed 2 million in February, more than doubling from its last update in September. The upbeat numbers come weeks after China's DeepSeek launched an AI model it said could match or even outperform Western rivals at a fraction of the cost, stirring doubts about U.S. dominance in the generative AI space. But a surge in demand for DeepSeek since then has caused outages at the small startup. There have also been questions around how DeepSeek was able to obtain Nvidia's H800 chips, used to train AI models, even though Washington had banned their exports to China. OpenAI reported a twofold increase in developer traffic for its reasoning models over the last six months and a fivefold surge for its o3 model since its launch in late January. The news about OpenAI's weekly users was first reported by CNBC earlier in the day. (Reporting by Rishi Kant in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)

OpenAI's Weekly Active Users Surpass 400 Million

OpenAI reported a fivefold surge for its o3 model since its launch ChatGPT developer OpenAI's weekly active users surged past 400 million in February, a company spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday, highlighting rapid growth in the adoption of artificial intelligence tools. The Microsoft-backed startup had 300 million weekly active users in December. Its paying business users also crossed 2 million in February, more than doubling from its last update in September. The upbeat numbers come weeks after China's DeepSeek launched an AI model it said could match or even outperform Western rivals at a fraction of the cost, stirring doubts about US dominance in the generative AI space. But a surge in demand for DeepSeek since then has caused outages at the small startup. There have also been questions around how DeepSeek was able to obtain Nvidia's H800 chips, used to train AI models, even though Washington had banned their exports to China. OpenAI reported a twofold increase in developer traffic for its reasoning models over the last six months and a fivefold surge for its o3 model since its launch in late January. The news about OpenAI's weekly users was first reported by CNBC earlier in the day.

With 400 million users, OpenAI maintains lead in competitive AI landscape

Competition in the AI industry remains tough, and OpenAI has proven that it is not taking any coming challenges lightly. The generative AI brand announced Thursday that it services 400 million weekly active users as of February, a 33% increase in less than three months. OpenAI chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap confirmed the latest user statistics to CNBC, indicating that the figures had not been previously reported. The numbers have quickly risen from previously confirmed stats of 300 million weekly users in December. Recommended Videos The AI company has seen unexpected competition in the Chinese startup, DeepSeek, which is marketing AI services of comparable power run by open-source models. However, Lightcap told CNBC that the growth of the company's flagship product, ChatGPT has been a "natural progression" as it gains more features, and more people become familiar with the service. Ahead of the introduction of DeepSeek, OpenAI already had heavy competition from other notable brands such as Google, and its Gemini language model family. However, in addition to a loyal consumer base, OpenAI has also been able to leverage partners in the enterprise space. Lightcap said the company has seen its enterprise business double since September 2024, to 2 million paying customers. The executive noted employees will recommend ChatGPT to their organizations after using the tool as an enthusiast. The company includes Uber, Morgan Stanley, Moderna, and T-Mobile as some of its largest accounts. "We get a lot of benefits, and a tailwind from the organic consumer adoption where people already have familiarity with the product. There's really healthy growth, on a different curve," he told CNBC. Additionally, developer usage has also doubled in the last six months, with the use of the o3 reasoning model increasing times four. Developers independently utilize available code and models to create their own products and services. Despite the shakeup it has brought to the industry, Lightcap spoke positively about DeepSeek, nothing that its inception speaks to the power of AI models and how much the technology has become a staple in the everyday. The Chinese company notably affected the stock valuation of several companies. Additionally, details surfaced indicating that DeepSeek used an illegal method called distillation to extract data from OpenAI to train its own models. Other figures show that OpenAI's services didn't flounder amid the media frenzy surrounding DeepSeek. Similwarweb stats from late January indicated that DeepSeek saw peak daily visits of 49 million, while ChatGPT remained the leading AI tool with 139.3 million daily visits in the same timeframe. OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman stated in a recent Reddit AMA that the company dropped the ball in terms of open-source development, but also added that it is not the brand's highest priority. Notably, the company launched ChatGPT as an open-source research project, but it has become more proprietary over time. Without giving much detail, Altman, along with other OpenAI executives, suggested that the company has plans to make older AI models open source in the future.

400 million users later OpenAI still has a major problem

OpenAI reported having 400 million weekly active users as of February 2025, a notable increase from 300 million in December 2024. The company's chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, shared this information with CNBC as OpenAI seeks to position itself as a leading consumer technology entity. Usage of OpenAI's platforms continues to grow rapidly, although the company has not disclosed specific numbers for paid subscriptions to ChatGPT Plus or ChatGPT Pro. On the enterprise side, OpenAI now has 2 million paying enterprise users, doubling from 1 million since September 2024. Developer traffic for OpenAI's APIs has also seen significant growth, having doubled in the past six months, with the usage of the company's reasoning model o3 quintupling. According to CNBC, Lightcap emphasized a "natural progression" for ChatGPT, noting the importance of word-of-mouth referrals and user familiarity with the product. "People hear about it through word of mouth. They see the utility of it. They see their friends using it," Lightcap explained, highlighting the organic growth stemming from personal usage leading to enterprise adoption. OpenAI counts major companies like Uber, Morgan Stanley, Moderna, and T-Mobile among its largest clients. Lightcap compared the current trajectory of OpenAI's enterprise business to the growth of cloud services pioneered by Amazon Web Services two decades ago. He acknowledged a learning curve in scaling enterprise solutions, stating, "There's a buying cycle there, and a learning process that goes into scaling an enterprise business." OpenAI's impressive growth comes in the wake of new competition from Chinese company DeepSeek, which launched rival AI technologies, impacting market perceptions and valuations of U.S. tech firms. Following DeepSeek's announcements in January 2025, companies like Nvidia experienced significant losses, with the tech giant seeing a 17% drop in market value, erasing nearly $600 billion. In response to DeepSeek's entrance into the market, OpenAI accused the company of improperly using its models via a technique known as distillation. Despite facing this new competition, Lightcap indicated that OpenAI's strategies regarding open source development and its product roadmap remain unchanged. OpenAI is also navigating legal challenges, including a lawsuit from co-founder Elon Musk, who claims breach of contract tied to the company's transition to a for-profit model. Meanwhile, significant investments continue, with Microsoft contributing billions and SoftBank nearing a $40 billion investment that could elevate OpenAI's valuation to approximately $300 billion. Earlier this month, Musk and a group of investors submitted a bid of $97.4 billion for the nonprofit assets of OpenAI. However, OpenAI's board dismissed this claim, asserting that it was not an actual bid. OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor reiterated that the company "is not for sale." Lightcap commented on the competitive landscape created by Musk's actions, noting, "The numbers tell the story. We try to be very transparent about where we stand on all of this. (Musk) is a competitor. He's competing. It's an unorthodox way of competing."

OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap Says Company Reaches 400 Million Weekly Active Users | PYMNTS.com

"People hear about it through word of mouth," he said in the report. "They see the utility of it. They see their friends using it." Meanwhile, the company's enterprise business now has 2 million paying users, around double the number it had in September, according to the report. Lightcap said employees will often use ChatGPT personally before recommending it to their companies. "We get a lot of benefits and a tailwind from the organic consumer adoption where people already have familiarity with the product," he said, per the report. "There's really healthy growth on a different curve." Also doubling in the last six months is developer traffic, Lightcap said in the report, adding that OpenAI's "reasoning" model o3 saw five-fold growth among developers. OpenAI's growth is happening as it faces new competition from DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company with an open-source AI model whose emergence last month rocked the tech world with claims that its model could perform as well as OpenAI's at a fraction of the cost. "DeepSeek challenges the narrative that innovation must come at an unsustainable cost," Gokul Naidu, a consultant for SAP, told PYMNTS in January. "For businesses, this means AI could soon be accessible to small and medium enterprises, not just tech giants with deep pockets." Some tech world figures have disputed DeepSeek's cost claims, and OpenAI has accused the company of improperly harvesting its models. Lightcap told CNBC the new competition hasn't changed the way OpenAI thinks about open source or its plans for spending or launching products. "DeepSeek is a testament to how much AI [has] entered the public consciousness in the mainstream," he said, per the report. "It would have been unfathomable two years ago. It's a moment that shows how powerful these models are and how much people really care."

ChatGPT's growth surges despite DeepSeek buzz

Despite the emergence of Chinese-owned DeepSeek's AI platform, U.S.-based OpenAI's ChatGPT continues its growth. The San Francisco-based tech company reported 400 million weekly active users as of February, up 33% from 300 million in December, the company's chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap, told CNBC in an interview yesterday. Lightcap told the network that the growth is behind the "natural progression" of ChatGPT as it becomes more useful and familiar to a broader group of people. "People hear about it through word of mouth. They see the utility of it. They see their friends using it," Lightcap said in the interview, adding that it takes time for individuals to find use cases that resonate. "There's an overall effect of people really wanting these tools, and seeing that these tools are really valuable." Unmesh Kulkarni, Head of Gen AI at data analytics company, Tredence, says that ChatGPT is a superior product over DeepSeek, which is also driving growth. "DeepSeek R1 is an interesting and leading model with reasoning. However, they are not clearly superior to GPT's or Gemini models across the board in terms of performance, speed, and accuracy," Kulkarni said, referring to the various models the AI platforms use. Robert W. Taylor, counsel with IT law firm Carstens, Allen & Gourley, LLP, echos the accuracy concerns about DeepSeek vs. ChatGPT. "I've seen interesting opinions from people who have been vigorously testing DeepSeek and conclude that it is not quite as good from an accuracy or performance standpoint as some of the leading leaning language models," Taylor says. The message about DeepSeek's security concerns may also be resonating with Americans, dampening its appeal. "If you sign up with DeepSeek directly, their terms and conditions and privacy policy make it crystal clear that all your data will be sent to China, processed there, stored on servers there, and that they can generally use your data to train their models or for any other purpose under the theory of improving their service," Taylor said

OpenAI's weekly active users surpass 400M - VnExpress International

ChatGPT developer OpenAI's weekly active users surged past 400 million in February, a company spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday, highlighting rapid growth in the adoption of artificial intelligence tools. The Microsoft-backed startup had 300 million weekly active users in December. Its paying business users also crossed 2 million in February, more than doubling from its last update in September. The upbeat numbers come weeks after China's DeepSeek launched an AI model it said could match or even outperform Western rivals at a fraction of the cost, stirring doubts about U.S. dominance in the generative AI space. But a surge in demand for DeepSeek since then has caused outages at the small startup. There have also been questions around how DeepSeek was able to obtain Nvidia's H800 chips, used to train AI models, even though Washington had banned their exports to China. OpenAI reported a twofold increase in developer traffic for its reasoning models over the last six months and a fivefold surge for its o3 model since its launch in late January.

OpenAI's weekly active users surpass 400 million

Elon Musk says human intelligence will be dwarfed by machines as he talks AI chatbots in Dubai. "We're really in the final stages of polishing Grok 3. Probably it gets released in about a week or two, so pretty soon." ChatGPT developer OpenAI's weekly active users surged past 400 million in February, a company spokesperson told Reuters on Thursday, highlighting rapid growth in the adoption of artificial intelligence tools. The Microsoft-backed MSFT.O startup had 300 million weekly active users in December. Its paying business users also crossed 2 million in February, more than doubling from its last update in September. The upbeat numbers come weeks after China's DeepSeek launched an AI model it said could match or even outperform Western rivals at a fraction of the cost, stirring doubts about U.S. dominance in the generative AI space. But a surge in demand for DeepSeek since then has caused outages at the small startup. There have also been questions around how DeepSeek was able to obtain Nvidia's H800 chips, used to train AI models, even though Washington had banned their exports to China. OpenAI reported a twofold increase in developer traffic for its reasoning models over the last six months and a fivefold surge for its o3 model since its launch in late January. The news about OpenAI's weekly users was first reported by CNBC earlier in the day.

OpenAI Records 400 Million Active Users, Sees USD 11 Billion Revenue as Possible Goal: Report

OpenAI is in talks for a USD 40 billion investment from SoftBank, valuing it at USD 300 billion. San Francisco-based OpenAI has reached 400 million weekly active users, marking a 33 percent increase from 300 million in December, according to COO Brad Lightcap. The surge underscores the growing adoption of ChatGPT, fueled by word-of-mouth popularity and increasing enterprise demand, CNBC reported. Also Read: California State University to Become First AI-Powered University System in US with OpenAI "People hear about it through word of mouth. They see the utility of it. They see their friends using it," Lightcap reportedly said in an interview, adding that it takes time for individuals to find use cases that resonate. "There's an overall effect of people really wanting these tools, and seeing that these tools are really valuable." OpenAI now has 2 million paying enterprise users, roughly doubling from September, Lightcap said, according to the report. He pointed out that employees often use ChatGPT personally and then suggest its implementation to their companies. Companies like Uber, Morgan Stanley, Moderna, and T-Mobile are integrating OpenAI's AI models into their operations. Developer engagement has also skyrocketed, with traffic doubling in the past six months and quintupling for OpenAI's latest "reasoning" model, o3. Lightcap compared this adoption to the rise of cloud services, which Amazon Web Services pioneered two decades ago. While the consumer business may grow faster since people can adopt it at will, enterprise is in the "process of building up," he reportedly said. Also Read: OpenAI's ChatGPT Service Only Disseminates Public Information: Report "There's a buying cycle there, and a learning process that goes into scaling an enterprise business," Lightcap explained, according to the report. "AI is going to be like cloud services. It's going to be something that you can't run a business that ultimately is not really running on these very powerful models underneath the surface." "The numbers tell the story," Lightcap said, according to the report "We try to be very transparent about where we stand on all of this. (Elon Musk) is a competitor. He's competing. It's an unorthodox way of competing." Despite its growth, OpenAI remains unprofitable, projecting USD 5 billion in losses on USD 3.7 billion in revenue for 2024. However, CFO Sarah Friar, according to another CNBC report, suggested that USD 11 billion in revenue is within reach. OpenAI is in talks for a USD 40 billion investment from SoftBank, potentially valuing the company at nearly USD 300 billion. Reportedly, Friar also said that the OpenAI's pace of innovation has prevented it from becoming a "commodity." "We have managed to punch well above our weight to become effectively a hyperscaler, both in terms of the compute that we're buying and the way we're investing in it," she said, according to the report. Also Read: Music Labels T-Series, Saregama, Sony Seek to Join Copyright Suit Against OpenAI in India: Report Earlier this month, OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman rejected a more than USD 97 billion bid from co-founder Elon Musk and a group of investors to take control of the startup. Friar, according to the report, emphasised that OpenAI remains focused on its mission to make search, research and other tasks easier for their users. "We are eyes on the prize, which is, how do we keep growing our business," she reportedly said. "You see it in our numbers."