ChatGPT has surpassed 400 million weekly active users. This was announced by OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap on X, noting that the company feels "very fortunate to serve 5% of the world every week".
This figure is double the number of active users recorded in August 2024 and four times higher than the same result in November 2023.
OpenAI is trying to simplify its ChatGPT product offering so that users don't have to choose which natural language processing model will answer their questions.
Also, in the near future, GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 models will be available in the chat interface and API clients. In addition, all ChatGPT users will soon have unlimited access to GPT-5, which will help to further expand the audience.
DeepSeek effect
OpenAI's audience growth comes amid growing competition from Chinese rival DeepSeek, which shook tech markets in January. Investors fear it could hurt the profitability of American AI companies.
Tech giants have been hit particularly hard. Nvidia shares, for example, lost 17% of their value on the day DeepSeek was revealed, wiping nearly $600 billion off the company's market capitalization.
Later that week, OpenAI accused DeepSeek of illegally using its models through a technique known as distillation.
In addition to DeepSeek's emergence, OpenAI is also facing lawsuits. Billionaire Elon Musk, one of the company's co-founders, is taking legal action to prevent OpenAI from becoming a commercial organization.
Earlier this month, Musk and a group of investors offered to buy OpenAI's assets for $97.4 billion. Sam Altman responded to that offer with "No thanks, but we can buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want," alluding to Musk's deal to buy the platform (now known as X) for $44 billion in 2022.
