For those who’ve ever typed “please” or “thanks” into ChatGPT, you might have contributed, very marginally, to OpenAI’s electrical energy invoice. Earlier this 12 months, a social media consumer requested how a lot cash the corporate had “misplaced in electrical energy prices” from customers being well mannered. OpenAI chief government Sam Altman replied that it amounted to “tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} properly spent,” including: “You by no means know.” It was partly a joke. Nevertheless it additionally pointed to a severe query: what does it truly value to run one of the vital extensively used AI methods on the planet, and the way is OpenAI planning to pay for it?As of early 2026, ChatGPT serves between 800 million and 900 million weekly lively customers worldwide, with roughly 35 million paying for subscriptions and the overwhelming majority accessing the platform free of charge. That scale is the results of one of many quickest adoption curves in client know-how historical past: ChatGPT surpassed 100 million customers simply two months after launch, cementing its place among the many most quickly scaling digital merchandise ever created.However hypergrowth at that magnitude comes with monumental value. Supporting a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of weekly customers requires huge computing infrastructure, pushing working bills to ranges which have profoundly reshaped OpenAI’s construction, capital technique, and long-term roadmap.
The attention-watering day by day invoice
Operating a big language mannequin will not be like internet hosting an internet site. Each immediate triggers a recent computation throughout 1000’s of high-performance chips. In 2023, know-how analysis agency SemiAnalysis estimated that working ChatGPT value roughly $700,000 per day, with roughly $694,444 of that attributed to {hardware} and inference prices. On the time, the calculation was primarily based largely on GPT-3 infrastructure and estimated greater than 3,600 servers powering the system. SemiAnalysis chief analyst Dylan Patel urged GPT-4 would value considerably extra. These numbers are actually extensively considered conservative. Since 2023, OpenAI has launched extra highly effective fashions (together with GPT-5.x household methods as of February 2026), expanded API entry for builders, rolled out picture, voice and “deep analysis” capabilities, and scaled to a whole lot of hundreds of thousands extra customers. Inference — the price of producing every response, compounds dramatically at that scale. The Washington Publish beforehand calculated that producing a 100-word AI e mail each week for a 12 months might eat 7.5 kilowatt-hours, roughly equal to an hour of electrical energy use throughout 9 households in Washington, D.C. Multiply that by a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of customers and fixed enterprise utilization, and the power footprint grows shortly. OpenAI’s reported annual burn fee has now reached roughly $17 billion, largely pushed by computing infrastructure. The corporate doesn’t count on to achieve profitability till round 2030.
From non-profit idealism to capped-profit actuality
OpenAI was based in 2015 as a non-profit with a mission to develop synthetic intelligence “in the best way that’s probably to profit humanity.” By 2019, the management concluded that donations alone couldn’t fund the dimensions of compute required to pursue superior AI methods, significantly synthetic normal intelligence (AGI). The corporate transitioned to a “capped-profit” construction, permitting outdoors funding whereas limiting returns. Microsoft invested billions. So did SoftBank and Nvidia, amongst others. By late 2025, OpenAI’s valuation had climbed to roughly $500 billion following a $6.6 billion share sale. Studies now recommend it’s getting ready the groundwork for a possible IPO in late 2026 or 2027, with some estimates putting doable valuations as excessive as $1 trillion, although such figures stay speculative. Following restructuring authorized by California and Delaware regulators in October 2025, possession was cut up roughly as follows:
- 26% held by the non-profit
OpenAI Basis - 27% by Microsoft
- 47% by workers and different traders
The strain to display a reputable path to profitability is intensifying.
Who Pays for ChatGPT?
OpenAI’s income mannequin is multi-layered. ChatGPT gives:
- Free tier (primary entry)
- Plus at $20/month
- Group at $25–$30 per consumer/month
- Enterprise (customized pricing)
- Professional, priced at $200 per 30 days (or greater enterprise-grade annual tiers), providing dramatically expanded utilization limits
As of mid-2025, based on sources:
- ChatGPT Plus had roughly 10 million customers
- OpenAI had 3 million paying enterprise customers throughout Enterprise, Group and Edu
- Complete paying subscribers have been estimated at round 35 million
- Free-to-paid conversion sits at roughly 5–6%
The corporate reported greater than $2 billion in annual income in 2023. Since then, progress has accelerated dramatically. OpenAI stated in 2025 that its annualized income run fee surpassed $20 billion, a 233% enhance from 2024, when income rose from $2 billion in 2023 to $6 billion in 2024.Regardless of this historic progress, the corporate is reportedly burning greater than $17 billion yearly, and income from subscriptions alone should fall in need of masking the immense compute and infrastructure prices required to maintain its AI operations.
API Entry
Builders pay per token. For superior fashions, pricing can attain:
- $1.25 per million tokens (enter)
- $10 per million tokens (output)
At enterprise scale, these prices compound shortly, for each prospects and OpenAI’s infrastructure.
GPT Retailer and customized fashions
Inside two months of launching customized GPTs, customers created greater than 3 million variants. Enterprise integration has accelerated, with 61% of entrepreneurs in a single survey reporting their firm offers ChatGPT Group or Enterprise licenses.
Adverts, IPO speak and the sustainability query
For years, Sam Altman publicly expressed discomfort with promoting. He as soon as stated he “hates” advertisements, calling them a “final resort” and describing combining them with AI as “uniquely unsettling.” In 2025, he softened that place, saying he was not “completely towards” advertisements however that it could “take loads of care to get proper.” As of February 2026, OpenAI is testing advertisements inside ChatGPT free of charge and $8/month “Go” tier customers in the USA. The corporate says advertisements are contextually related, clearly labelled and separate from chat responses, with consumer privateness preserved. With 800–900 million weekly lively customers, the bulk unpaid, and infrastructure prices measured in billions yearly, subsidising free utilization indefinitely will not be financially sustainable with out further income streams. The IPO hypothesis is tied to the identical actuality. OpenAI reportedly hopes to debut publicly as early as late 2026, partly to entry capital markets able to funding ever-expanding compute necessities and competitors with rivals equivalent to Anthropic.
