OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has announced a massive milestone for the AI chatbot ChatGPT, revealing that it now has over 800 million weekly active users.
Mr. Altman shared the impressive number during his keynote speech at the company’s recent Developer Day conference (Dev Day).
This figure shows a sharp rise in the AI tool’s popularity across everyday people, developers, large companies, and governments worldwide.
The 800 million weekly active users mark is a big jump from earlier user counts. ChatGPT had about 500 million weekly users at the end of March and was approaching 700 million in August of the same year.
The community building on OpenAI’s technology is also growing fast. Mr. Altman noted that four million developers are now using the company’s tools to create new applications.
The rate at which the AI models are being used through the API (the tools for developers) has also skyrocketed. The API now processes six billion tokens per minute, a huge increase from the 300 million tokens per minute reported in 2023.
The CEO emphasised that AI is no longer just a toy for people to experiment with but a tool people rely on for building and working every day.
During his keynote, Mr. Altman highlighted the dramatic growth with a comparison to the previous year:
“Back in 2023, we had two million developers and 100 million weekly ChatGPT users and we were processing about 300 million tokens per minute on our API. That felt like a lot at the time.”
He then gave the latest figures, clearly stating the new user count and his view on the current state of AI:
“Today, four million developers have built with OpenAI and more than 800 million people now use ChatGPT every week. And we process over six billion tokens per minute on the API.”
“AI has gone from something people play with to something people build with every day.”