Key Points
- OpenAI’s business products have surpassed 1 million paying users, up from 600,000 in April, indicating strong enterprise adoption.
- OpenAI is exploring high-priced subscriptions for upcoming models like “Strawberry” and “Orion,” with prices potentially reaching $2,000 per month.
- “Strawberry” is designed for deep research, utilizing specialized post-training to refine performance beyond initial training on generalized data.
- Apple and Nvidia are reportedly considering investments in OpenAI, potentially valuing the company above $100 billion.
OpenAI announced on Thursday that it now boasts over 1 million paying users across its business-focused products, including ChatGPT Enterprise, Team, and Edu. This marks a significant increase from the 600,000 paying users reported in April, highlighting the growing corporate adoption of the AI firm’s advanced chatbot powered by its large language models. CEO Sam Altman’s strategy to encourage enterprises to integrate ChatGPT into their operations appears to yield results.
Separately, The Information reported that OpenAI executives have been discussing higher-priced subscriptions for upcoming large-language models, such as a reasoning-focused model called “Strawberry” and a new flagship model named “Orion.” Early internal discussions suggest subscription prices could reach up to $2,000 per month, according to a source familiar with the matter. Currently, the ChatGPT Plus subscription costs $20 per month, while the free tier continues to attract hundreds of millions of users each month.
OpenAI, which has Microsoft as a key backer, is developing “Strawberry” to enable AI models to perform more sophisticated and deep research tasks. As reported by Reuters in July, Strawberry involves a specialized form of “post-training,” which refines OpenAI’s generative AI models to improve performance in specific areas after they have already been trained on large datasets. This approach is intended to enhance the capabilities of the base models to meet specialized needs.
The discussions around premium pricing come amid reports that tech giants Apple and Nvidia are in talks to invest in OpenAI for a new fundraising round that could value the company at over $100 billion. OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT application recently achieved over 200 million weekly active users, doubling the user base from the previous fall season.
