OpenAI Forecasts Nearly as Many ChatGPT Subscribers as Spotify by 2030
The Takeaway
- OpenAI has projected at least 8.5% of ChatGPT weekly users will pay for a subscription, up from about 5% today
- That would make OpenAI one of the world’s biggest subscription businesses
- It expects widespread ChatGPT use will make it easier to sell subscriptions to business customers
To boost ChatGPT revenue, OpenAI is following a playbook enterprise apps Zoom and Slack have used to increase paid users. It’s hooking up most of its users—which now number more than 800 million—with the free version of the chatbot and then trying to convince their employers to sign enterprisewide subscriptions, said a person with knowledge of the strategy.
As of July, about 35 million people paid for Plus or Pro subscriptions, which typically cost $20 and $200 a month, respectively, according to a person with knowledge of the figures. At the time, that amounted to 5% of its weekly active users. In five years’ time, OpenAI has projected that about 8.5% of 2.6 billion weekly active users of the chatbot, or 220 million people, will pay for a Plus plan, according to the same person.
If ChatGPT can attract that many subscribers, that would put it among the biggest subscription businesses in the world. Netflix and Spotify each have around 300 million paying subscribers, while Salesforce-owned Slack says it has more than 200,000 paying subscribers.
A more apt comparison might be with Microsoft’s Office 365 productivity app suite, estimated to have around 450 million paying subscribers. While people use ChatGPT for personal purposes, OpenAI has been adding more workplace features, such as the ability for employees to share chats with colleagues and to connect to internal company data through tools like Slack. These features could turn the chatbot into more of a direct competitor to Office 365 and Google Workspace, both of which are adding AI features to automate tasks like writing emails.
The ChatGPT projections, which haven’t previously been reported, show how OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his lieutenants are planning to capitalize on the three-year-old chatbot’s early lead to drive nearly $200 billion in annual revenue by the end of the decade, from around $13 billion this year.
OpenAI this summer increased its revenue expectations for ChatGPT, forecasting that chatbot subscriptions will generate about $270 billion in revenue through 2030. That includes about $87 billion in 2030 alone, up from $10 billion this year.
ChatGPT’s current and projected revenue growth recently boosted OpenAI’s private valuation to $500 billion, higher than those for Exxon Mobil, Johnson & Johnson and Netflix. At the same time, it has projected its cash burn this year through 2029 will total $115 billion.
OpenAI’s projections came out before Google’s recent AI software resurgence with the launch of Gemini 3, which that company is using to power its own ChatGPT competitor, Gemini, as well as AI-powered web search results.
In a call with investors earlier this month, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar acknowledged time spent had declined slightly as a result of ChatGPT content restrictions the company has introduced since August, according to Sources newsletter. These restrictions have prevented the chatbot from flirting with users under 18 or discussing suicide with them. In some cases, if the model can’t verify the age of the user, it restricts what they can chat about.
The company plans to roll out age-verification software by December, which should give verified adult users more latitude to engage with the chatbot on topics such as erotica.
ChatGPT is still dominant in the chatbot market. Its weekly active users rose more than three times in September from a year ago, according to a person with knowledge of the growth. These top Google’s 650 million monthly active Gemini users as of the third quarter.
However, ChatGPT’s weekly user growth has varied wildly this year, rising 42% in January compared to December 2024 but just 13% in September compared to August, according to the person with knowledge of the figures.
OpenAI hopes to increase its paying users by making enterprise-level deals with companies as more workers start using ChatGPT on their own, said the person with knowledge of the strategy.
That’s similar to the approach of videoconferencing firm Zoom and chat app Slack at the end of the last decade. Their free versions became a hit with individual workers, opening the door for the software firms to pitch paid subscriptions to businesses’ executives.
Business subscribers make up a small portion of ChatGPT’s subscriber base today. Earlier this month, OpenAI said 7 million users at companies accessed ChatGPT subscriptions through its business plans. These include ChatGPT Business for smaller companies and ChatGPT Enterprise for corporations. These plans provide companies including Canva and PwC with specialized security and compliance features, as well as connections with other enterprise tools such as Slack, Google Drive and GitHub.
“I believe we are in the best position, by a lot, to build the default AI platform for people,” Altman told employees late last month when he addressed the expected release of Gemini 3.
OpenAI’s subscription model contrasts with the approach of younger rival Anthropic, which generates about 80% of its revenue from selling access to its models through an application programming interface. Anthropic has projected that its API sales this year will be roughly double the revenue OpenAI generates from API sales, while subscriptions to Anthropic’s Claude chatbot will be just one-tenth of OpenAI’s ChatGPT subscription sales.
Arjun Pillai, co-founder and CEO of Docket.io, a startup that sells AI agents primarily powered by OpenAI models, said he had been a ChatGPT paid user for more than two years, upgrading from the $20 subscription to the $200 subscription this year. A few months ago, he also added ChatGPT Business subscriptions for his employees, attracted by features such as the ability to connect ChatGPT to tools provided by marketing software company HubSpot and Slack.
The collaboration features were another draw. “I can create a project and share it with someone else so that they don’t have to create it themselves,” he said.
While the growth in OpenAI’s nonpaying users has driven up cost and weighed on its gross profit margins, the company plans to generate about a fifth of its total revenue from new products such as shopping- or ad-related features in 2030. On Monday, OpenAI announced a personal shopping assistant for ChatGPT users that could someday enable the company to make money through ads or commissions.