The price of ChatGPT Plus could more than double over the next five years
If you want the smartest AI and most of ChatGPT’s features, you can currently pay $20 (about £15 / AU$29) per month to OpenAI for ChatGPT Plus – but that subscription cost could more than double over the next five years.
This is evident from a report by the New York Timesapparently based on OpenAI internal corporate documents. The first price increase, an additional $2 per month, is expected to occur before the end of 2024.
After that, we can expect OpenAI to “aggressively increase” the cost of ChatGPT Plus to $44 (about £33 / AU$64) per month by 2029. Currently, about 10 million people pay for ChatGPT Plus, the NYT report said.
We’re now well used to digital subscription services raising their prices every now and then, and it looks like ChatGPT Plus will be no different in that regard – although there may be new features and new AI models along with the price increases.
‘Burning through piles of money’
The main reason for the expected price increase for ChatGPT Plus is clear: powering the AI service costs a lot. The new report says OpenAI is “burning piles of cash,” and is on track to lose $5 billion over the course of 2024.
Although monthly revenue now stands at $300 million and annual revenue is expected to reach $3.7 billion this year (and $11.6 billion next year), OpenAI remains very firmly in the red, according to the documents to which the NYT managed to gain access. .
Behind the scenes, OpenAI is trying to raise about $7 billion in external funding, which would value the company at a cool $150 billion — about the level of a Goldman Sachs, an Uber or an AT&T. Behind the scenes, however, things remain uneasy: three managers have left the company in the past week.
However, none of this will necessarily impact end users – at least not until the price increases start. In recent days, OpenAI has made improvements to the ChatGPT 4o mini model and rolled out the chatbot’s Advanced Voice mode to more users.