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OpenAI is set to hit 700 million weekly active users for ChatGPT this week, up from 500 million in March, marking a more than fourfold year-over-year surge in growth, the company said Monday.
The figure spans all ChatGPT artificial intelligence products — free, Plus Pro, Enterprise, Team, and Edu — and comes as daily user messages surpassed three billion, according to the company. The growth rate is also accelerating, compared with 2.5 times year-over-year growth at this time last year.
“Every day, people and teams are learning, creating, and solving harder problems,” said Nick Turley, VP of product for ChatGPT, in announcing the benchmark.
OpenAI now has five million paying business users on ChatGPT, up from three million in June, as enterprises and educators increasingly integrate AI tools.
ChatGPT still has a ways to go to reach the reported user numbers for Google‘s AI search product, AI Overviews.
The product, which summarizes search results, now has about two billion monthly users across more than 200 countries, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said during the company’s quarterly earnings call.
The company’s AI chatbot, the Gemini App, now has more than 450 million monthly active users, according to Pichai.
The OpenAI milestone follows news last week that the company secured $8.3 billion from a syndicate of top investors, including Dragoneer Investment Group, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Coatue Management and Altimeter Capital.
The investment is part of a SoftBank-led $40 billion fundraising round, according to a person familiar with the deal, who asked not to be named in order to discuss financial information. The raise was completed ahead of schedule and was five times oversubscribed.
OpenAI’s annual recurring revenue is now at $13 billion, up from $10 billion in June, with the company on track to surpass $20 billion by year-end.
Even at a $300 billion valuation and $20 billion revenue run rate, OpenAI will need massive capital to support its global push.
The company’s Stargate joint venture with SoftBank, Oracle and MGX is planning up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure over four years.
OpenAI has already inked a $30 billion‑a‑year lease with Oracle for 4.5 gigawatts of U.S. data center capacity, struck a five‑year, $11.9 billion deal with CoreWeave and is expanding into Europe with Stargate Norway.
OpenAI is also working with Emirati firm G42 to build a massive data center in Abu Dhabi.
The company’s rivals are making similar moves.
A leaked memo shared with Wired showed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei reversing course on Middle Eastern funding, writing that it has become “substantially harder to stay on the frontier” of AI development without tapping Gulf sovereign wealth. It marked a shift from Anthropic’s prior stance.
CNBC reported last year that Anthropic refused to take funds from Saudi Arabia as it lined up new investors.
The fresh capital and usage growth underscore surging investor appetite for AI platforms as competition heats up. Anthropic is also in talks to raise up to $5 billion at a $170 billion valuation, following a $3.5 billion round earlier this year that valued the company at $61.5 billion.
