Altman himself claims that ChatGPT has amassed 800 million weekly active users

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said Monday that ChatGPT has reached 800 million weekly active users, marking a surge in popularity among consumers, developers, enterprises and governments.

ChatGPT's impressive development comes at a time when OpenAI is in a race to secure as many AI chips as possible and build as much AI infrastructure as possible. In August, OpenAI said it was close to reaching 700 million weekly active users, already up from 500 million weekly active users at the end of March.

“Today, 4 million developers were building with OpenAI,” Altman said. “Over 800 million people use ChatGPT every week, and we process over 6 billion tokens per minute in the API. Thanks to all of you, AI has gone from something people play with to something people build every day.”

Altman made the announcement during OpenAI's keynote Developer Day presentation, which also included announcements about new tools for building applications inside ChatGPT, as well as constructing more complex agent systems.

“This will create a new generation of applications that are interactive, adaptive, personalized, and that you can talk to,” Altman said.

Launched in November 2022, ChatGPT saw unprecedented user growth almost immediately, becoming both the leading consumer AI product and one of the fastest-growing online services in history. The tool recently expanded into proactive services with OpenAI Pulse, sending customized morning summaries to participating users. The site has also been dogged by concerns about AI-induced sycophancy and delusions, particularly in the recent case of Allan Brooks, who was misled into believing he had made a novel mathematical discovery with the help of ChatGPT.

OpenAI, still legally recognized as a nonprofit, became the world's most valuable private company on Thursday after selling $6.6 billion in private shares, giving it a valuation of $500 billion. The company has also been launching new products at a breakneck pace, last week releasing a new version of its Sora video generation tool, coupled with its accompanying social media network. That same week, the company partnered with Stripe to launch its agent commerce platform.