February 21, 2025 – According to a recent report by CNBC, OpenAI has reached a new milestone with 400 million weekly active users, marking a significant 33% increase from 300 million users in December last year.
This previously undisclosed data highlights the rapid growth of the company’s user base. In an interview, Brad Lightcap, the Chief Operating Officer of OpenAI, attributed this surge in popularity to the “natural progression” of ChatGPT becoming more useful and familiar to a wider audience.
“People are discovering ChatGPT through word of mouth, recognizing its utility, and seeing their friends use it,” explained Lightcap. He added that users often take some time to find the right use cases that align with their needs. “There’s a real appetite for these tools, and people are realizing their immense value,” he stated.
Interestingly, this growth isn’t limited to consumer use. Lightcap revealed that OpenAI now has 2 million paying enterprise customers, almost doubling from September last year. He noted that many employees first use ChatGPT personally and then recommend it for enterprise applications.
“We’ve benefited greatly from organic consumer adoption, especially when users already have some familiarity with the product,” said Lightcap. “Our enterprise business is growing steadily, showing a different growth curve compared to our consumer business.”
Furthermore, Lightcap pointed out that developer traffic has doubled in the past six months, and the usage of OpenAI’s “inference” model o3 by developers has surged fivefold. Developers are integrating OpenAI technology into their applications, with major corporate clients including Uber, Morgan Stanley, Moderna, and T-Mobile.
Comparing this phenomenon to the early days of cloud services, Lightcap drew parallels to the revolution initiated by Amazon Web Services (AWS) two decades ago. While the consumer business may grow rapidly due to organic user adoption, the enterprise business is still in the “building phase.”
“Enterprise business involves a buying cycle and a learning curve, but AI, like cloud services, will become an essential tool for every business,” said Lightcap. “In the future, any business that doesn’t rely on these powerful models will find it difficult to survive.”
