OpenAI’s flagship service ChatGPT remains as popular as ever, with the brand having hit a 500 million active user milestone in recent days amid the Studio Ghibli viral trend that came with the brand introducing its GPT-4o-powered image generation.
The company’s CEO, Sam Altman, shared on X on Monday that ChatGPT gained “one million users in the last hour.” He compared the user spike to the burgeoning interest in OpenAI during its early days in 2022, when the chatbot gained one million users in five days, VentureBeat noted.
The twenty-six-month-old brand has evolved quickly since its introduction to the industry. Its most recent developments have left users excited to use the chatbot to create images based on the popular Japanese animation style of Studio Ghibli and share them on social media. The brand recently enabled access to image generation for its free users once more after halting it last week due to the massive demand over working its servers. Altman sarcastically mentioned that the GPUs at OpenAI’s data centers were “melting” due to the fad. This is just one instance of the brand continuing to stand out in the industry.
OpenAI notably hit a 400 million weekly active user milestone in February, while comparisons to the Chinese AI company DeepSeek were still fresh. Reports at the time indicated that the brand saw a 33% increase in less than three months from 300 million users in December 2024, coming from primarily organic growth. Before that, a December report from the Financial Times indicated that OpenAI had a goal of hitting 1 billion users in 2025 as it aimed to secure financial backing and shift from a private organization to a for-profit company.
Now, OpenAI is on track to meet several of those goals. It is not only midway to 1 billion users, but it has also secured a funding round led by SoftBank, with a $300 million valuation. This is the largest private equity investment to date, according to VentureBeat.
Despite this achievement, the company still has a lot of work to do to meet its goals. If it is to become a for-profit company by the end of this year, OpenAI will likely be running at a substantial loss for many years before it starts to see tangible profits. It is likely the company won’t break even until 2029, the publication noted.
OpenAI is known for its consumer-facing products, such as ChatGPT and its associated AI models; however, the brand may have to focus more on enterprise projects to earn money moving forward.
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.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.