Kylie Robison

The startup announced a new voice within ChatGPT that sounds really... annoyed? It’s named Monday, and OpenAI spokesperson Taya Christianson says it will be available to users through the end of April. When I tested it out, the voice sounded like a teenager you just woke up from a nap. Lots of exaggerated sighs and sarcastic quips.

ChatGPT has added 4.5 million paying subscribers since the end of last year, according to The Information. With 20 million subscribers paying for the service, the company is earning “at least $415 million in revenue per month,” a rough estimate that doesn’t account for corporate plans or the new $200 a month Pro tier. The report adds that this could put OpenAI “well within reach” of its revenue projection of $12.7 billion this year.

CEO Sam Altman posted that the company is planning to “release a powerful new open-weight language model with reasoning in the coming months.” The team has been long hinting at this release: In a Reddit AMA two months ago, Altman said the company was “discussing” an open weight model and that OpenAI has “been on the wrong side of history here.” There’s also, uh, the DeepSeek of it all.

Last week, OpenAI released Images for ChatGPT which led to an explosion of interest thanks to its ability, in part, to generate Studio Ghibli inspired AI art. It looks like the virality has paid off — CEO Sam Altman posted that the company has added one million users in the last hour alone (he’s also been begging users to stop generating images: “our GPUs are melting”).

I listen to a lot of podcasts as an AI reporter since these CEOs seem to really love a hot mic and a sympathetic ear. I just listened to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s interview with Stratechery’s Ben Thompson and found it especially illuminating — he hints at de-hyping AGI, how SOTA models are less important than the “1-billion daily active user destination site,” and more.

The ChatGPT-maker expects to earn $12.7 billion in revenue this year, Bloomberg reported, which would be a massive jump from the $3.7 billion in annual revenue it raked in last year (The New York Times previously reported that OpenAI expected to earn $11.6 billion this year). It also expects to bring in $29.4 billion in revenue next year. This new revenue projection comes just months after the startup launched a $200 a month tier.