Competition in the AI industry remains tough, and OpenAI has proven that it is not taking any coming challenges lightly. The generative AI brand announced Thursday that it services 400 million weekly active users as of February, a 33% increase in less than three months.
OpenAI chief operating officer, Brad Lightcap confirmed the latest user statistics to CNBC, indicating that the figures had not been previously reported. The numbers have quickly risen from previously confirmed stats of 300 million weekly users in December.
The AI company has seen unexpected competition in the Chinese startup, DeepSeek, which is marketing AI services of comparable power run by open-source models. However, Lightcap told CNBC that the growth of the company’s flagship product, ChatGPT has been a “natural progression” as it gains more features, and more people become familiar with the service.
Ahead of the introduction of DeepSeek, OpenAI already had heavy competition from other notable brands such as Google, and its Gemini language model family. However, in addition to a loyal consumer base, OpenAI has also been able to leverage partners in the enterprise space.
Lightcap said the company has seen its enterprise business double since September 2024, to 2 million paying customers. The executive noted employees will recommend ChatGPT to their organizations after using the tool as an enthusiast. The company includes Uber, Morgan Stanley, Moderna, and T-Mobile as some of its largest accounts.
“We get a lot of benefits, and a tailwind from the organic consumer adoption where people already have familiarity with the product. There’s really healthy growth, on a different curve,” he told CNBC.
Additionally, developer usage has also doubled in the last six months, with the use of the o3 reasoning model increasing times four. Developers independently utilize available code and models to create their own products and services.
Despite the shakeup it has brought to the industry, Lightcap spoke positively about DeepSeek, nothing that its inception speaks to the power of AI models and how much the technology has become a staple in the everyday.
The Chinese company notably affected the stock valuation of several companies. Additionally, details surfaced indicating that DeepSeek used an illegal method called distillation to extract data from OpenAI to train its own models.
Other figures show that OpenAI’s services didn’t flounder amid the media frenzy surrounding DeepSeek. Similwarweb stats from late January indicated that DeepSeek saw peak daily visits of 49 million, while ChatGPT remained the leading AI tool with 139.3 million daily visits in the same timeframe.
OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman stated in a recent Reddit AMA that the company dropped the ball in terms of open-source development, but also added that it is not the brand’s highest priority. Notably, the company launched ChatGPT as an open-source research project, but it has become more proprietary over time. Without giving much detail, Altman, along with other OpenAI executives, suggested that the company has plans to make older AI models open source in the future.
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.