ChatGPT currently has 350 million monthly users as of last June according to a report by The New York Times. But of this number only 10 million are paid users with a subscription of $20 per month. Although the company's revenue reached $300 million last August, OpenAI is still predicted to record a loss of $5 billion this year due to various operational costs incurred.
For this reason in the same report OpenAI is expected to increase the ChatGPT subscription fee to $22 per month by the end of the year before gradually increasing it to $44 per month by 2029. The issue of how the company can continue operations with increasing costs is seen as one of the reasons why OpenAI has lost dozens of high-profile staff high since the beginning of 2024.
As previously reported, the CTO and two senior officers of OpenAI's research division resigned this week. Of the 11 founders of the company, only 2 remain with one of them Greg Brockman now "on leave" for personal reasons. After firing OpenAI at the end of 2023, CEO Sam Altman strengthened his position in the company.