OpenAI’s $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro plan, launched in December 2024, has drawn attention for its advanced features but is now at the center of the company’s growing financial strain. CEO Sam Altman revealed on Sunday that the premium subscription, aimed at professionals and enterprises, is operating at a loss due to unexpectedly high usage costs.
The company positioned the Pro plan as a comprehensive solution for researchers, engineers, and other individuals in industries such as programming, data analysis, and customer service at a premium price, hoping to finally earn some money. However, users seem to stretch it to the limits, resulting in a money sinkhole for the company.
“We are currently losing money on OpenAI Pro subscriptions,” Altman disclosed on January 6, via X. “I personally chose the price and thought we would make some money.”
insane thing: we are currently losing money on openai pro subscriptions!
— Sam Altman (@sama) January 6, 2025
people use it much more than we expected.
Pro Plan Features and Subscriber Appeal
ChatGPT Pro was introduced as a solution for high-demand workflows, offering advanced tools like o1 Pro mode, an even more compute-intensive version of OpenAI’s o1 reasoning model. With ChatGPT Pro, subscribers also gain unlimited access to models such as GPT-4o and other exclusive features.
Despite these strengths, the high costs of operating ChatGPT Pro—estimated at $700,000 daily—have hindered OpenAI’s financial recovery. Already before its launch, the company was running at a $5 billion yearly loss for 2024 against revenues of just $3.7 billion.
OpenAI’s reliance on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform has proven both a strength and a liability. While Azure powers ChatGPT Pro’s compute-heavy operations, the costs associated with hosting and training large models have contributed to OpenAI’s financial strain.
On the revenue side, things are definitely not set to improve. OpenAI’s latest powerful o3 reasoning model, currently in closed beta testing, is pushing compute-costs for running frontier models to unprecedented levels.
At the same time, OpenAI’s AGI roadmap is closely tied to its financial strategy. Internal agreements with Microsoft link the formal declaration of AGI to achieving profitability, further raising stakes for OpenAI’s economic sustainability.
The company just announced a major restructuring of its corporate model to address growing financial challenges, with plans to transition its for-profit arm into a Public Benefit Corporation. Elon Musk is fighting against this in an ongoing lawsuit, seeing support from prominent AI leaders such as Geoffrey Hinton.
