ChatGPT’s revenue growth slows down as mobile app downloads grow

NEW DELHI: OpenAI’s ChatGPT is seeing a slow down in its revenue growth, an indication that the AI chatbot is nearing saturation in terms of how many users are willing to pay for its paid service.

According to data from market intelligence firm Appfigures, ChatGPT was witnessing more than 30 per cent revenue growth in the last couple of months but now, the rate at which revenue grew is actually the lowest to date at just 20 per cent (as of September).

Although 20 per cent growth is still “amazing especially when we're looking at millions, it's lower than the previous months which were in the 30s,” the report noted. The upgraded ChatGPT+ subscription service costs $19.99 per month that offers faster response times, priority access at peak times and early access to new features and improvements.

“Our estimates show ChatGPT earned $3.2 million in September from the App Store and Google Play. That is net which means what OpenAI gets to keep after Apple and Google take their fees,” Appfigures said in its report.

Around 15.6 million people downloaded OpenAI's ChatGPT app in September. The official ChatGPT app from OpenAI has been on the App Store since May and Google Play since July. The report said that with a few small tweaks, OpenAI can easily increase that conversion rate and see much faster revenue growth.

Last month, OpenAI said it expected to reach $1 billion in revenue in 2023.

The cost of running ChatGPT is prohibitively high for the company. According to an analysis from Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon, each enquiry costs about 4 US cents.

If ChatGPT queries grew to a tenth the size of Google searches, it would require about $48.1 billion in GPUs initially and around $16 billion in chips per year to remain functioning. Sam Altman-run OpenAI is also reportedly raising funds at a valuation of $80-$90 billion via sale of existing shares.