OpenAI Experiences Rapid Growth Amid Rising Competition

San Francisco-based tech company OpenAI is experiencing rapid growth despite increasing competition. According to Brad Lightcap, the company’s Chief Operating Officer, OpenAI had 400 million weekly active users as of February, marking a 33% increase from 300 million in December.

Lightcap attributed this growth to the “natural progression” of ChatGPT as it becomes more useful and familiar to a broader audience.

“People hear about it through word of mouth. They see the utility of it. They see their friends using it,” Lightcap explained, noting that it takes time for individuals to discover valuable use cases.

This surge in user adoption is also benefiting OpenAI’s enterprise business, which now boasts 2 million paying enterprise users, doubling from September.

Lightcap highlighted that many employees who use ChatGPT personally advocate for its implementation within their companies.

“We get a lot of benefits and a tailwind from organic consumer adoption where people already have familiarity with the product,” he stated.

“There’s really healthy growth on a different curve.”

Developer traffic on OpenAI’s platform has also doubled in the past six months, with usage of the company’s “reasoning” model O3 quintupling.

Developers leverage OpenAI to integrate its technology into their own applications, with notable enterprise customers including Uber, Morgan Stanley, Moderna, and T-Mobile.

Lightcap likened OpenAI’s growth trajectory to the rise of cloud services, pioneered by Amazon Web Services two decades ago. While consumer adoption may occur more rapidly, enterprise adoption is in the “process of building up,” he said.

“There’s a buying cycle and a learning process involved in scaling an enterprise business. AI is going to be like cloud services. Eventually, businesses will be unable to operate without these powerful models running behind the scenes,” Lightcap concluded.

CNBC