OpenAI Adds 200 Million Weekly Users in 4 Months

Artificial intelligence startup OpenAI says it is on the verge of a new user-base milestone.

“This week, ChatGPT is on track to reach 700M weekly active users — up from 500M at the end of March and 4× since last year,” Nick Turley, the company’s head of product, wrote in a post on X Monday (Aug. 4).

“Every day, people and teams are learning, creating, and solving harder problems. Big week ahead. Grateful to the team for making ChatGPT more useful and delivering on our mission so everyone can benefit from AI.”

The news comes as OpenAI is set to debut its GPT-5 model. According to published reports last month, this model will incorporate distinct AI models to perform different functions, as well as OpenAI’s o3 model and other technologies.

This follows CEO Sam Altman’s statement in February that the company is working to simplify its offerings by unifying its o-series models and GPT-series models, thus creating systems that can use all the company’s tools and be useful for a range of tasks.

“We want AI to ‘just work’ for you; we realize how complicated our model and product offerings have gotten,” Altman wrote. “We hate the model picker as much as you do and want to return to magic unified intelligence.”

Last week, OpenAI was valued at $300 billion after concluding its latest round of fundraising, which was five times oversubscribed.

The startup snagged $8.3 billion months earlier than expected, per a report from The New York Times’ DealBook. The funding is part of the company’s effort to secure $40 billion in funding this year, to which SoftBank has pledged $30 billion.

The biggest investor was Dragoneer Investment Group, at $2.8 billion. DealBook called it an “astonishing check” from a single venture fund that “may be one of the largest ever written.”

Meanwhile, new research from PYMNTS Intelligence shows growing optimism about generative AI among chief product officers, particularly in the tech sector. That’s a factor likely driven in part by a stronger familiarity with AI tools.

“This divergence matters. Tech firms moving to operationalize gen AI are better positioned to shape internal standards, influence vendor priorities and define early benchmarks for success—all outcomes that can fuel widespread adoption across other industries,” PYMNTS wrote. “By contrast, sectors still weighing trade-offs may forgo speed in exchange for certainty, but they risk falling behind as gen AI tools evolve at lightning speed.”

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