It Costs So Much to Run ChatGPT That OpenAI Is Losing Money on $200 ChatGPT Pro Subscriptions

I’m also thinking of the cost to the students who have to repeat a course or fail out of a demanding program because they couldn’t AI their way to a passing grade.

“People use it much more than we expected,” the cofounder wrote, later adding in response to another user that he “personally chose the price and thought we would make some money.”

Though Altman didn’t explicitly say why OpenAI is losing money on these premium subscriptions, the issue almost certainly comes down to the enormous expense of running AI infrastructure: the massive and increasing amounts of electricity needed to power the facilities that power AI, not to mention the cost of building and maintaining those data centers.

Way back in spring 2023, analyst Dylan Patel told The Information that the company was likely spending around $700,000 per day running ChatGPT, or about 36 cents per query; nowadays, a single query on the company’s most advanced models can cost a staggering $1,000.

In other words, there’s an inconvenient reality for anyone in the AI space trying to turn a profit, as OpenAI now is: the smarter these systems get, the more expensive they become to run — which poses a major problem for pricing.

While trying its hardest to become profitable, OpenAI is still falling massively short — and is even losing —Futurism.com