Fact Checked by 
OpenAI’s CEO has admitted that the company is facing unforeseen financial difficulties with its $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro subscription. Sam Altman revealed on X that he had been the architect of the subscription price, however, it was “currently losing money” due to its increased usage.
He wrote: “insane thing: we are currently losing money on openai pro subscriptions! people use it much more than we expected.”
insane thing: we are currently losing money on openai pro subscriptions!
people use it much more than we expected.
— Sam Altman (@sama) January 6, 2025
As ReadWrite reported last month, OpenAI launched ‘ChatGPT Pro,’ which includes access to its smartest model OpenAI o1, as well as o1-mini, GPT-4o and Advanced Voice. The plan also sees the addition of an o1 pro mode which is a version of o1 that “uses more compute to think harder and provide even better answers to the hardest questions.”
That said, CNBC suggests that OpenAI expected around $5 billion in financial losses on $3.7 billion in revenue in 2024. Its board posted a message at the end of December, acknowledging that it needed significantly more money than initially anticipated.
OpenAI's Board of Directors is evaluating our corporate structure with the goal of making a stronger non-profit supported by the for-profit’s success.
Our plan would create one of the best-resourced non-profits in history. https://t.co/6GvnMyCQmR
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) December 27, 2024
The statement read: “The hundreds of billions of dollars that major companies are now investing into AI development show what it will really take for OpenAI to continue pursuing the mission.
“We once again need to raise more capital than we’d imagined. Investors want to back us but, at this scale of capital, need conventional equity and less structural bespokeness.”
OpenAI considers new for-profit structure amid financial losses
On Thursday (Jan. 2), the AI company announced plans to restructure, stating it would establish a public benefit corporation to remove the limitations placed on the startup by its current nonprofit parent organization. In September, ReadWrite wrote that the company would retain its non-profit segment as a separate entity and that talks are ongoing.
Under the plan, the ChatGPT maker would turn its current for-profit arm into a Delaware-based public benefit corporation (PBC). The setup is meant to balance societal interests alongside shareholder value. However, the move has been criticized by Elon Musk, who dropped a lawsuit in June against the firm, after claiming that the company’s transformation into a profit-focused entity breached its commitment to creating artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity.
ReadWrite has reached out to OpenAI for comment.
Featured image: Canva
