Bea Beltran Tech 01.22.2023 23:Jan PM EST

OpenAI's ChatGPT Premium to Launch at $42 a Month

OpenAI, an artificial research laboratory is said to be launching the premium version of ChatGPT called ChatGPT Profesional. The AI chatbot will have more features than its free version, which will cost users $42 a month.

Premium Version AI

The premium version differs from the free one by offering additional features that are more available, better response times, and subscribers will get priority access. The free version is still available, but the premium version will provide expanded capabilities.

The chatbot actually costs $100,000 a day, as mentioned in Interesting Engineering, which is why the paid version would make sense. Financial technology specialist Linas Beliūnas said that this adds to more than $3 million a month.

With a $42 per month subscription, the company will make up for the $3 million a month expense with spare to change. ChatGPT has around 75 million unique monthly users. A small fraction of that paying for a premium service is adequate enough.

10% of the total unique monthly users paying for a subscription could possibly generate $3.46 billion in revenue for a year for OpenAI. At a 60% profit margin, the company can get $2 billion per year, as mentioned by Beliūnas on LinkedIn.

He even compared how the profit would be more than what Uber, Spotify, Twitter, and Airbnb earned last year, combined. This shows how ChatGPT Premium Version could become the next big thing for the future of AI technology.

Although, the price and features of the premium version will still depend on what the users require as well as what they agreed on with OpenAI. The company's CEO Sam Altman said that they still have no definite date for the release, but that they are already working on it.

Will It Take Off?

It's quite possible seeing as AI is regarded as the future of technology, and OpenAI is obviously making strides with its product. However, Daniel Schloss believes that the estimated 10% who are willing to pay for the subscription is not entirely plausible.

He replied to the original LinkedIn post saying that the mentioned 10% of users will not pay for the premium version just yet. Schloss suggested that 1-2% was more probable, and could generate around $200 million to $400 million in pure profit.

According to him, OpenAI should've either improved on the AI more before charging $42 per month or at least started off at $15 a month first. The company can then increase the price as its premium version became better. Beliūnas agreed with Schloss' reply.

It's still important to note that the chatbot has gotten Google nervous. Reports say that Google is already addressing the threat the ChatGPT's AI can pose to its search-engine business. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has already been in meetings regarding Google's AI strategy.

ChatGPT displayed its potential to rise through the ranks. It has gathered over a million users just a few days after its release. It is capable of answering queries in a conversational manner, which has been used for making essays and even therapy.