Gotta pay for those datacenter buildouts somehow
OpenAI’s budget ChatGPT Go subscription tier has migrated to the US, soon to be accompanied by advertising. The company’s free tier will be similarly afflicted.
ChatGPT Go, the company’s cheapest paid offering, has been an option in 171 countries since August and is now available stateside for $8 per month.
„In the coming weeks, we’re also planning to start testing ads in the US for the free and Go tiers, so more people can benefit from our tools with fewer usage limits or without having to pay“, said Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications. „Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscriptions will not include ads.“
About 5 percent, or 35 million, of ChatGPT’s weekly active user base as of July 2025 paid for Plus ($20/month) or Pro ($200/month) subscriptions, according to The Information. The company reportedly projects that by 2030 about 8.5 percent of a weekly active user base of roughly 2.6 billion – around 220 million people – will pay for a Plus subscription. With so many non-paying customers, ads may be its only route to financial survival. (That or a government bailout, which the company says won’t happen.)
OpenAI has reportedly committed to spend more than $1 trillion to fuel its quest for the vaguely defined idea of „artificial general intelligence.“ The AI giant lost north of $11.5 billion in the third quarter alone, according to numbers Microsoft – a large OpenAI investor – disclosed in its financial filings.
Meanwhile, online advertising is a massive business, contributing more than $74 billion to Google’s revenues and more than $50 billion to Meta’s revenues in the third quarter of 2025 alone. And chatbots like ChatGPT are technically capable of capturing a massive amount of extremely personal data, given that people use them for everything from vibe coding to online companionship to informal therapy.
