The Information cited internal predictions from OpenAI: the number of paying users for ChatGPT will grow from about 35 million (as of July 2025) to 220 million within five years, corresponding to a rise in weekly active users (WAU) from 800 million to 2.6 billion, and a pay penetration rate increasing from 5% to 8.5%; the company expects subscription revenue to approach $200 billion by 2030, and its valuation has therefore been raised to $500 billion.

Growth Path

1. Free Funnel: First let over 800 million people use ChatGPT for free, forming work habits, and then push enterprises to purchase in bulk.

2. Enterprise Upgrade: Replicate the Slack/Zoom path, with ChatGPT Business/Enterprise already attracting 7 million enterprise customers.

3. Product Price Increase: Plus (20 dollars per month) and Pro (200 dollars per month) are available together. In the future, new sources of income such as advertising and shopping commissions will be introduced. The goal is for non-subscription revenue to account for approximately 20% by 2030.

Competition and Risks

- Google's Gemini3 is making a strong counterattack, with Gemini having 73 million monthly downloads, compared to 93 million for ChatGPT, and the gap is narrowing.

- The monthly growth rate of ChatGPT has decreased from 42% at the beginning of the year to 13% in September. User usage time has slightly declined due to content safety policies.

- Annualized revenue in Q3 2025 was about 20 billion dollars, but operational losses reached 11.5 billion dollars during the same period, indicating significant pressure to achieve profitability.