Perhaps a lot of people received ChatGPT subscriptions as Christmas and Valentine’s Day gifts?
It is possible, with OpenAI on Thursday saying ChatGPT now has 400 million weekly users — up 33% from the first week of December. That updated user count was shared by COO Brad Lightcap with CNBC; he also shared his thoughts on why the popular AI model is growing even more popular.
“People hear about it through word of mouth. 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.”
Lightcap did not share how many of these users pay for the service versus how many use the free version. ChatGPT offers three tiers; a free model, a $20 per month model, and a $200 per month subscription that offers “extended access” to its Sora video generation tool, among other features.
The latest user update comes at a busy time for OpenAI and the AI industry in general. X owner Elon Musk sent the nonprofit board controlling OpenAI an unsolicited $97.4 billion bid last week — a bid that was unanimously rejected by the board a few days later.
The bid was the latest twist in his ongoing feud with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has been pushing to convert the company behind ChatGPT into a for-profit business. Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 alongside Altman and a handful of other executives, but Musk has vehemently opposed Altman’s plan to shift away from the company’s nonprofit status.
He joked it should change its name to “ClosedAI” in March 2024 due to its move away from its initial mission: providing open source AI technology that benefits everyone. And last September, the X owner shared his displeasure with OpenAI’s planned business restructuring.
“You can’t just convert a non-profit into a for-profit,” he posted. “That is illegal.”
Musk, meanwhile, released Grok 3 — X’s latest AI model — on Monday night. The Tesla boss had teased last week that Grok 3 was “scary smart”; on Monday evening, during a demo, he and a small team of xAI employees showed that Grok 3’s learning speed surpassed ChatGPT, DeepSeek and other competitors when it came to topics like math, science and coding.
The Altman-Musk AI battle does not look like it will be stopping anytime soon.
