ChatGPT Set to Hit 700 Million Weekly Active Users This Week

OpenAI has announced that its flagship product, ChatGPT, is on the verge of reaching 700 million weekly active users globally, a milestone projected to occur this week (via CNBC).

This marks a dramatic increase from 500 million at the end of March and represents a fourfold surge from the previous year. Nick Turley, Vice President and head of the ChatGPT app, revealed that usage has climbed fourfold since last year.

In addition to its explosive consumer growth, ChatGPT now supports over 5 million paying business subscribers, up from 3 million in June. The surge aligns with OpenAI’s rollout of enhanced features like its latest image generation capabilities powered by the GPT‑4 model, which drew widespread user excitement in March.

OpenAI’s recent expansion is accompanied by the company’s estimated $12 billion annualized revenue, translating to about $1 billion in monthly income. Despite this success, the company forecasts approximately $8 billion in cash burn by the end of 2025, highlighting the scale of investment needed to sustain innovation.

The platform is handling around 2.5 billion user prompts daily, with an estimated 330 million individual users participating in the prompt traffic. This blazing pace of interaction illustrates how ChatGPT has become deeply integrated into daily communication and decision-making workflows.

CEO Sam Altman has pitched the growth narrative as a shift in how people seek information, moving from traditional browser searches to AI-driven conversational tools. Insights from recent user behavior suggest that AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT now account for a growing percentage of desktop search traffic.

OpenAI faces mounting competition from firms like Google DeepMind, Meta, Microsoft’s xAI, and Chinese AI firm DeepSeek. With rivals unveiling their own large language models and drawing top engineering talent, OpenAI is doubling down on innovation and raising billions in fresh capital.

This week’s milestone comes ahead of OpenAI’s anticipated launch of GPT‑5, which is expected to unify its o‑series and GPT series models into a more advanced architecture.