OpenAI Reaches 1 Million Paying Users

(Reuters) – OpenAI announced on Thursday that it has surpassed 1 million paying users across its business products: ChatGPT Enterprise, Team, and Edu. This growth follows an increase from 600,000 users in April, showcasing the effectiveness of CEO Sam Altman’s efforts to encourage corporate adoption of ChatGPT.

Additionally, reports from the Information indicate that OpenAI executives are considering higher-priced subscriptions for upcoming large-language models, including the reasoning-focused ‘Strawberry’ and a new flagship model named ‘Orion.’ During early internal discussions, subscription pricing could reach as high as $2,000 per month, as reported by a source familiar with the discussions.

Currently, ChatGPT Plus charges $20 per month, while the free tier caters to hundreds of millions of users monthly. OpenAI, with backing from Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), is developing ‘Strawberry’ to enhance deep research capabilities of AI models. This includes a specialized adaptation process known as “post-training,” which adjusts base models for better performance after they’ve already been trained on extensive data.

The discussions about pricing arise amid news that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) are exploring investments in OpenAI, which may lead to a valuation exceeding $100 billion. OpenAI recently reported its chatbot has over 200 million weekly active users, doubling from last fall’s figures.