OpenAI's user base and revenue are skyrocketing.

On April 1 (Eastern Time), according to The Information, the number of paying users for ChatGPT has exceeded 20 million, increasing by nearly 30% compared to 15.5 million at the end of last year. Users are willing to pay for subscriptions to this AI that can write code, draft articles, provide health advice, and even help with financial planning.

How much revenue do users bring to OpenAI?

The media pointed out that, based on subscriptions, ChatGPT currently generates at least $41.5 million per month, with annualized revenue reaching $5 billion. This figure represents a nearly 30% increase from December's monthly revenue of $33.3 million and annualized revenue of $4 billion.

However, ChatGPT's actual revenue may be higher. In addition to the basic subscription like ChatGPT Plus, priced at $20/month, there are also enterprise-level users purchasing high-end Pro packages costing $200/month.

It is worth noting that apart from ChatGPT subscription revenue, OpenAI's revenue also comes from numerous developers and platforms that extensively utilize OpenAI models via API calls. Previously, OpenAI estimated that its API business could generate about $2 billion in revenue this year.

If OpenAI maintains this growth rate, its total revenue in 2025 could reach as high as $12.7 billion, far surpassing the $4 billion expected in 2024.

Although ChatGPT's user base is expanding and its total user growth rate exceeds revenue growth, its paid user ratio is declining. OpenAI stated on Monday that its current weekly active users have reached 500 million, growing by 43% compared to 350 million at the end of last year. However, due to the surge in free users, the proportion of paying users has dropped from 5% three months ago to the current 4%.

In addition, OpenAI announced on Monday that it plans to raise $40 billion at a pre-money valuation of $260 billion. Because significant funds are needed for computing power and providing services to free users, although OpenAI is currently unprofitable, the company expects to achieve profitability in at least five years (by 2029).

Fierce Competition from Rivals in the Second Tier

Despite being the undisputed leader in AI chat applications, OpenAI's ChatGPT is facing strong competition from its rivals.

Data from Similarweb and Sensor Tower shows that products from emerging players like Gemini, Claude, and Grok are rapidly capturing user attention.

In March, Google's Gemini had an average daily visit count of 10.9 million, up 7.4% month-over-month. Microsoft's Copilot had an average daily visit count of 2.4 million, up 2.1%. Anthropic's Claude reached an average daily visit count of 3.3 million; traffic for Musk-backed xAI's Grok surged nearly 800% month-over-month, catching up with DeepSeek's 16.5 million average daily visits.

Grok, in particular,凭借马斯克的 backing and integration with the X platform, has become the fastest-growing dark horse in terms of traffic. However, these figures remain relatively small compared to ChatGPT's data, which already had 500 million weekly active users by late March. Similarweb noted that the competition for second place in chatbot rankings is extremely intense.

Performance on mobile devices (app downloads and usage) is equally fierce. Analysis indicates that app-based users of AI chatbots are also surging, partly due to frequent updates to AI models. Data from Sensor Tower shows that after Claude released its new model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, on the week of February 24, app-based weekly active users surged by 21%. Following the release of its 2.0 Flash model, Gemini's weekly active users increased by 42%.

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Original source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7488485214278009385/

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