ChatGPT creator OpenAI says the AI tool has 250 million “active weekly users” and most of its revenue comes from consumers.
“We have been wowed at just the pace of growth, particularly on the consumer side,” said OpenAI’s chief financial officer, Sarah Friar, as she disclosed the number of subscribers in an interview with Bloomberg TV host Ed Ludlow over the weekend, on the sidelines of the Money 20/20 conference in Las Vegas.
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While not all active users are paying users, the company “is converting free users to the paid product at a rate of 5% to 6%,” Friar told Ludlow. She did not disclose how many active users are paying subscribers.
By comparison, Netflix has 282.7 million “global streaming paid memberships” as of its most recent financial quarter.
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Friar told Ludlow that the AI startup makes three-quarters of its revenue from consumer subscriptions to its offerings rather than from enterprises.
“We have been wowed at the pace of growth,” said Friar.
Friar also emphasized the corporate use of its software. Last month, the company said it has one million paying users for ChatGPT’s enterprise and team versions.
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“Banks, financial institutions, FinTechs – people are using it today in their business,” said Friar. “I can’t think of a wealth management client today that is not coming to us saying, ‘What do we need to do, how can we get started?'”
Friar cited investment bank Morgan Stanley as a customer using OpenAI’s large language models (LLMs) in its financial advisor services “to create better financial advice and outcomes for customers.”
The largest vertical markets for the products include education, healthcare, and financial services.
Friar said pricing levels are being evaluated by OpenAI. The recent “o1” version of the GPT LLM, said Friar, can do the work that a legal firm would pay $1,000 to $2,000 monthly for a human paralegal to carry out. The program costs a user $60 per hour.
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“There’s a lot of value that is in the product today,” she said, “but we are just trying to make sure people can get started, can see the outcomes, and over time we believe that value-to-price will come into alignment.”
Friar said the company is “open to alternate business models.” She suggested those alternatives could include a “pivot away from just pure subscription models to models that include ads.”
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She cited the example of “a ChatGPT prompt for high-heeled shoes […] I want five stores I can buy from now.” In other instances, she said ads would not fit the context of a user’s activity.
Friar said she expects computing power – not just from Microsoft, but from other parties – to “maximize the compute for consumers.”
Microsoft and OpenAI have been partners for five years, with OpenAI receiving computing power in Microsoft’s data centers and Microsoft receiving intellectual property in return.
Ludlow asked Friar about the prospects for artificial general intelligence (AGI), software that could meet or exceed human intelligence.
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“I think we have the plan in place. I think if Sam were sitting on this seat, he would say that AGI is closer than most think,” she said, referring to CEO Sam Altman.
“I would agree based on what I’m seeing,” said Friar, who based her assessment on what she has seen internally by combining o1 with GPT models. “You have in your pocket human intelligence that is PhD level.”
