The OpenAI startup that created ChatGPT remains a private company, and therefore its financial statements are not publicly published. However, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar recently admitted that 75% of the company’s revenue comes from paid customers. A paid tier subscription requires a minimum of $20 per month.
Image source: OpenAI
According to Sarah Friar, OpenAI management is surprised by the rate of growth of the user base, especially in the consumer sector. In the corporate segment, as she explains, where the audience is quite “young,” a significant part of the company’s annual revenue is formed. In September, OpenAI reported that the audience of ChatGPT commercial subscribers had reached 1 million people. It covers not only corporate users, but also academic clients.
ChatGPT is now used by 250 million people weekly, with approximately 5 or 6% of free customers eventually becoming paid customers. “The most important thing for us is to stay at the forefront: creating cutting-edge models, ensuring that we ultimately provide humanity with strong artificial intelligence (AGI) for its benefit,” Bloomberg quoted OpenAI’s CFO as saying.
Sarah Friar makes no secret of the fact that OpenAI is involved in a global initiative to create a computing infrastructure that would power 5 gigawatts of power plants. The company encourages its partners and competitors, as well as the authorities of individual countries who would like to take advantageous positions in the rapidly emerging market of artificial intelligence systems, to invest in this project. For OpenAI itself, creating infrastructure is new territory, as a company spokeswoman admits, and she has a lot to learn.