Executive Summary:
- The Information reports that OpenAI projects that its $20-a-month ChatGPT Plus subscriptions will decrease from 44 Million subscribers in 2025 to a projected 9 million subscribers in 2026.
- OpenAI projects to make up the difference by increasing its ad-supported ChatGPT Go ($5 or $8-a-month depending on the region) subscriptions from 3 million in 2025 to 112 million in 2026.
The Information reported on April 28 that OpenAI projects an 80% decline in its $20-a-month ChatGPT Plus subscribers - from 44 million in 2025 to 9 million in 2026 - and intends to make up the shortfall using its cheaper, ad-supported "ChatGPT Go" subscriptions by growing them from 3 million in 2025 to 112 million in 2026:
OpenAI at the start of this year forecast that consumer subscribers to ChatGPT Go, which costs $8 a month in the U.S. and around $5 monthly in other countries such as India, would surge about 36 times to 112 million this year. As a result, leaders have projected that the number of subscribers to ChatGPT Plus will fall 80% to about 9 million. Users of the most expensive Pro plan will double but will still make up less than 1% of the total, the forecasts said.
That's a load-bearing "as a result" if I ever saw one. What OpenAI is actually saying here is that it's expecting a dramatic decline in its primary business line - $20-a-month ChatGPT subscriptions - and intends to somehow get 109 million new paying subscriptions of an entirely different product. As The Information noted, this would be a 3600% subscriber increase year-over-year.
Eager math-knowers in the audience will also realize that, if we assume a $5-a-month subscription cost, even if OpenAI succeeds in what would be the single-largest user acquisition campaign in history, it would still be $155 million short. I imagine OpenAI's answer would be "we're going to be serving these customers ads" and "some of them will pay $8 a month," neither of which are substantive.
Putting aside ChatGPT Go for a second, it is pretty remarkable that OpenAI is projecting an 80% decrease in ChatGPT Plus subscriptions. Perhaps this projection is something that will only come to pass if ChatGPT Go grows at such a rate...or perhaps it's something that OpenAI already sees happening, as The Wall Street Journal reported earlier in the week that OpenAI had missed revenue targets for new users and revenue, which makes the timing of this leak all-the-more suspicious.
I should also add that adding 109 million new subscribers at any price point will likely massively increase OpenAI's burn-rate.
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