- OpenAI predicts more than 220 million paying ChatGPT users by 2030, driven by rapid global adoption of generative AI across businesses, education and consumer productivity tools.
- The company expects enterprise demand, AI agents and new licensing deals to significantly expand revenue streams as competition among major AI developers intensifies.
What happened: OpenAI outlines massive growth expectations
OpenAI is forecasting that more than 220 million people will pay for ChatGPT by 2030, according to internal financial projections reported by The Information. The outlook suggests an aggressive expansion of its subscription model, built on growing global reliance on generative AI tools across work, education and personal productivity.
The report indicates that OpenAI expects a large share of this paid growth to come from corporate and professional users adopting advanced versions of ChatGPT for business operations. The company has been pushing sales of ChatGPT Enterprise and Teams, alongside deploying specialised AI agents capable of automating tasks such as coding, document processing and customer support. These agents are expected to become a major driver of revenue as companies integrate more AI-powered workflows.
Beyond individual subscriptions, OpenAI is also exploring licensing agreements with major technology platforms and hardware manufacturers. The company has already partnered with Microsoft to embed its models into productivity tools, and further deals across consumer electronics, smartphones and cloud services could expand the reach of ChatGPT even further.
OpenAI’s projections come as competition intensifies, with Anthropic, Google and Meta scaling up their own generative AI ecosystems. Nevertheless, the company believes its product strength, brand awareness and rapid model improvements will sustain a strong lead in the paid AI services market.
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Why it’s important
OpenAI’s projection signals a transformation in how consumer and enterprise software will be monetised over the next decade. A user base of more than 220 million paying customers would place ChatGPT among the largest subscription services globally, rivalled only by entertainment platforms such as Netflix and Spotify.
The adoption curve also highlights how generative AI could become a standard tool across industries, shaping everything from office productivity to software engineering and education. If enterprise uptake continues at pace, AI assistants may become a default interface for digital work, fundamentally altering the structure of corporate IT spending.
For governments and regulators, the rapid scaling of paid AI platforms raises new questions around competition, transparency and long-term market concentration. As generative AI becomes embedded in critical systems, oversight will likely intensify.
