OpenAI recently surpassed 1 million subscribers, each paying $20 (or more, for Teams and Enterprise), but that doesn’t seem to be enough to keep the company financially afloat given that hundreds of millions of people use the chatbot for free.
According to The Information, OpenAI is reportedly mulling over a massive rise in its subscription prices to as much as $2,000 per month for access to its latest and models, amid rumors of its potential bankruptcy.
Anyone can use OpenAI’s ChatGPT service for free; however, subscribers gain priority access to the AI model during times of peak usage, early access to new features, and the ability to create custom GPTs (the company only recently wheeled out its Dall-E image generator from behind the paywall). Citing early internal discussions, The Information reports that OpenAI is reportedly considering hiking the price of access by a whopping 9,900%, however there is no official word yet on the reasoning for such a move. It is also unclear if that price increase would apply to the current ChatGPT service running on the GPT-4o model, or to the upcoming Strawberry and Orion models.
Between hardware procurement, data center infrastructure, energy and cooling, not to mention the cost of actually training a large language model, generative AI is an expensive business. OpenAI, arguably the standard bearer for the industry, reportedly has spent $7 billion on training its models (compared to just $1.5 billion on staffing), is projecting losses of $5 billion (with a “B”), and based on projections, could be filing for bankruptcy within the next year — though a recent round of funding from investors will likely delay the need for drastic financial action.
OpenAI is also facing increased competition from the rest of the generative AI field. Google and Anthropic continue to iterate more competent and capable chatbots while matching OpenAI’s current subscription pricing, and Apple Intelligence is expected to begin rolling out to mobile devices and the desktop next month. This news also comes as investors grow increasingly anxious about the amount of money companies like Google and Microsoft are sinking into AI technology without seeing a particularly strong path to profitability.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.