Historical context: This article concerns reporting and product announcements from 2023. Its figures and offers are not current estimates or prices.
In August 2023, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, was reportedly generating more than $80 million in monthly revenue. Reuters, citing The Information on August 29, reported a pace that could exceed $1 billion over the next 12 months. That was a projection based on reported sales, not realized annual revenue or proof that OpenAI had become profitable.
The Information was the source of those reported financial details. Separately, TechCrunch reported an April 2023 share sale above $300 million at a $27–29 billion valuation. A private valuation, revenue and profit are different measures; none should be used as a substitute for the others.
The August Reuters report compared the monthly revenue estimate with $28 million for the whole of 2022, before the February 2023 launch of ChatGPT Plus. A UBS study reported by Reuters in February 2023 estimated 100 million monthly active users in January and described exceptionally fast adoption. That dated analyst comparison was not a permanent ranking of all apps, nor evidence of profitability.
ChatGPT’s ability to emulate human conversation while accomplishing tasks such as writing poetry, suggesting restaurants and distilling complex topics attracted substantial attention. Its responses could still be inaccurate or unsuitable, so fluent output did not establish reliability. Interest in generative AI helped ignite a wave of investment from Big Tech and other sectors.
Growing revenue could help fund development, but it did not by itself show that previous losses had been recovered. Contemporary Bloomberg reporting, referring to The Information, put OpenAI’s 2022 loss at around $540 million during the development of GPT-4 and ChatGPT. These were reported private-company figures, not audited financial statements verified for this article.
OpenAI launched ChatGPT Enterprise on August 28, 2023. The announcement described security and privacy features, including not training on business data, and named Canva, The Estée Lauder Companies and PwC among early users. Those were the provider’s launch statements, not independent security certification by GPTOnline.
On February 1, 2023, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Plus at $20 per month, with access during peak times and other benefits. Its launch announcement also confirmed continued free access. This historical subscription offer should not be read as a complete description of today’s plans or limits.
Running and developing AI systems required substantial computing resources. Besides subscriptions, OpenAI sold API access to its models, another revenue channel noted in the August reporting. Revenue growth and ongoing infrastructure costs therefore needed to be considered separately when discussing financial sustainability.
Microsoft’s January 23, 2023 announcement confirmed a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment and expanded computing partnership. It did not disclose the precise profit-repayment formula asserted in the earlier version of this article. That unverified formula and the unsupported $100 billion AGI cost forecast are not treated here as established contractual or financial facts. The evidence supports a historical story of reported revenue growth, not a confirmed financial turnaround.
Historical adoption estimate: Reuters reporting of the February 2023 UBS estimate.
