ChatGPT Plus is going to get a bit more expensive soon
It turns out running an AI-powered chatbot is really expensive.
OpenAI is planning to increase the price of ChatGPT Plus over the next five years from $20 per month to more than double that at $44 per month, per an internal document shared by The New York Times.
This is necessary as the company claims it is increasingly expensive to run the AI model efficiently and effectively both financially and in terms of hardware.
Along with the general cost of running a business like staff salaries, maintenance and other daily costs, OpenAI reportedly spends upwards of $3 million every month to keep its services up and running.
These high operational costs could lead to a $5 billion loss, despite its $300 million monthly revenue in August 2024, as reported by The New York Times.
To save things, and make the expenses a bit easy on everyone, there won't be a massive jump in price for premium subscribers just yet. First, the company plans to increase the monthly cost of using ChatGPT Plus from $20 to $22 in 2024. Then, over the coming years, it would gradually be increased to $44.
OpenAI also looks towards investors in its plan to increase funding. Since OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman announced that the company will be shifting from a non-profit to a for-profit company, it has been in talks with some major tech companies like Microsoft, Nvidia and Apple, however, Apple did pull out recently.
ChatGPT has a large user base of over 200 million weekly users and a million paying subscribers, making it a successful startup. However, it is technically still in its early stages.
So, considering that some people might consider ChatGPT Plus a bit too expensive, compared to other AI offerings like Google's Gemini, the increment might affect the company's value to customers.
Emmanuel Oyedeji
