If you’d like the smartest AI and the most options from ChatGPT, you’ll be able to at the moment pay $20 (about £15 / AU$29) a month to OpenAI for ChatGPT Plus – however that subscription payment could more than double over the next five years.
That is based on a report from the New York Times, apparently based mostly on inside firm paperwork from OpenAI. The first price bump, an additional $2 a month, is tipped to be coming earlier than the finish of 2024.
After that, we will anticipate OpenAI to “aggressively elevate” the price of ChatGPT Plus to $44 (about £33 / AU$64) a month by 2029. There are at the moment round 10 million folks paying for ChatGPT Plus, the NYT report says.
We’re now effectively used to digital subscription companies bumping up their prices once in a while, and it appears ChatGPT Plus goes to be no completely different in that regard – although there could be new options and new AI fashions alongside the price will increase.
‘Burning by way of piles of cash’
The foremost purpose for the projected price hike for ChatGPT Plus is obvious: powering the AI service prices loads. The new report says OpenAI is “burning by way of piles of cash”, and is heading in the right direction to lose $5 billion throughout the course of 2024.
Whereas month-to-month income is now as much as $300 million, and annual gross sales are anticipated to be $3.7 billion this 12 months (and $11.6 billion next 12 months), OpenAI stays very firmly in the crimson, as per the paperwork that the NYT has managed to realize entry to.
Behind the scenes, OpenAI is trying to elevate round $7 billion in outdoors funding, which might worth the firm at a cool $150 billion – round the stage of a Goldman Sachs, an Uber, or an AT&T. There continues to be turbulence behind the scenes although, with three executives quitting the firm in the last week.
None of this essentially impacts finish customers although – no less than not till the price rises begin. In current days, OpenAI has pushed out improvements to the ChatGPT 4o-mini mannequin, and rolled out the chatbot‘s Superior Voice mode to more users.