OpenAI said on February 20, 2025, that ChatGPT had surpassed 400 million weekly active users. The milestone was shared by COO Brad Lightcap and reported by contemporary outlets; it is a historical company-reported figure, not ChatGPT’s current user count. OpenAI said in April 2026 that ChatGPT had reached 900 million weekly users.
What OpenAI announced
The February 2025 figure referred to people using ChatGPT during a week, not every OpenAI product or every application built with its API. Lightcap shared the milestone in an interview with CNBC, and OpenAI confirmed the figure to Reuters, as reported by TechCrunch and Reuters via Yahoo Finance.
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It was a company-reported operating metric, not a disclosed audited count. The public statements did not provide a full counting methodology or establish that the total represented 400 million individually verified people.
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How ChatGPT’s reported weekly audience grew
OpenAI’s milestones and later reports suggest rapid growth, but they were disclosed at different times and through different channels. They should not be treated as one audited, consistently measured series.
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| Date | Reported weekly users | Attribution and context |
|---|---|---|
| November 2023 | About 100 million | Contemporary reporting on OpenAI’s milestone: TechCrunch. |
| August 2024 | More than 200 million | OpenAI said the figure had doubled since November 2023, according to Axios. |
| December 2024 | About 300 million | Reported in later coverage of the February milestone: TechCrunch. |
| February 20, 2025 | More than 400 million | OpenAI’s reported milestone covered here: TechCrunch. |
| Late March 2025 | About 500 million | Later company figure reported by CNBC: CNBC. |
| By the end of July 2025 | More than 700 million | OpenAI’s research paper described total weekly active users at this level: OpenAI. |
| October 2025 | 800 million | Reported by Sam Altman, according to the figures summarized in OpenAI’s later materials. |
| April 8, 2026 | 900 million | OpenAI’s later official enterprise article: OpenAI. |
What “weekly active users” does—and does not—tell you
A weekly active user, or WAU, is generally a user who engages with a service during a seven-day period. OpenAI’s public statements did not spell out all the rules behind the 400-million count, including how accounts were deduplicated across devices or platforms, what activity qualified, or how shared accounts were treated.
That makes the figure different from several other commonly cited measures:
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- Registered accounts: accounts that exist, whether or not they are used in a given week.
- Monthly or daily active users: people or accounts active over different time windows, which cannot be directly substituted for a weekly figure.
- Paid subscribers: users paying for a plan. The 400-million total included free and paid ChatGPT users; OpenAI did not disclose the full paid-subscriber count with the milestone.
- API customers or end users: developers and people using applications powered by OpenAI models, which are not necessarily counted as ChatGPT users.
- Unique, verified people: the public methodology does not establish that each counted account maps to a distinct person.
OpenAI’s later usage paper describes consumer-plan weekly active users as including Free, Plus, and Pro users. That scope distinction matters: a headline user count does not reveal how many people paid, how often they used the product, or whether they were using an individual or workplace account.
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Coverage of ChatGPT’s growth associated higher usage with new model releases and features, including GPT-4o, the o-series reasoning models, multimodal tools, and Advanced Voice Mode. It also pointed to mobile adoption and users incorporating the chatbot into recurring tasks rather than trying it only once. TechCrunch’s analysis discusses these factors.
Those explanations are plausible contributors, not proof that any one feature caused the increase. The 400-million announcement also came amid heightened attention to DeepSeek and competition from Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, Meta AI, Microsoft Copilot, and other assistants. Timing alone does not show that a rival caused ChatGPT’s growth.
What the milestone meant for OpenAI’s business
A large weekly audience gives OpenAI a broad base from which to attract subscribers, introduce workplace products, and encourage developers to build with its models. In February 2025, OpenAI also reported about 2 million paying enterprise users and said enterprise usage had doubled since September 2024, according to TechCrunch. That workplace figure is not the same measure as ChatGPT’s weekly active users.
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Scale can support a platform strategy spanning consumer subscriptions, workplace plans, and API services, but it also brings infrastructure demands. User growth alone does not disclose revenue per user, paid conversion, retention, computing costs, or profit. OpenAI later said enterprise revenue accounted for more than 40% of its revenue and that ChatGPT’s consumer familiarity helped companies introduce the product to employees; those later statements provide context, not facts established by the February announcement. See OpenAI’s April 2026 enterprise article.
Why comparisons with competitors need care
ChatGPT’s 400-million figure was weekly. Comparisons with a competitor’s monthly active users, app downloads, search users, or broader ecosystem audience are not like-for-like unless the time period, product scope, geography, and counting rules match. The milestone is evidence of substantial reported adoption; by itself, it does not establish that ChatGPT was the most-used AI tool or prove market dominance.
How to read the 400-million figure today
Use the number with its date and attribution: OpenAI said ChatGPT passed 400 million weekly active users in February 2025. It was a major growth milestone, but OpenAI’s later official figure was 900 million weekly users in April 2026. Neither figure, on its own, reveals how many users paid or whether the service was profitable.
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