Sam Altman touts ChatGPT’s reaccelerating growth to employees as OpenAI closes in on $100 billion funding

As OpenAI faces intensifying stress from rival Anthropic’s improved coding instruments, CEO Sam Altman is telling employees and traders that his firm is seeing its share of momentum.

Altman informed OpenAI employees on Friday that ChatGPT, the corporate’s common synthetic intelligence chatbot, is “again to exceeding 10% month-to-month growth,” in accordance to an inner Slack message seen by CNBC. OpenAI can also be making ready to launch “an up to date Chat mannequin” this week, Altman mentioned.

Greater than 800 million folks use ChatGPT every week, however Google and Anthropic have been gaining floor. OpenAI declared a “code pink” in December to enhance ChatGPT, and quickly sidelined a number of initiatives to focus on that effort.

In his message on Friday, Altman mentioned OpenAI’s coding product, Codex, grew about 50% from per week in the past. Codex competes immediately with Anthropic’s Claude Code, which has seen a wave of adoption during the last yr.

OpenAI launched a brand new Codex mannequin, GPT‑5.3-Codex, final week, as nicely as a stand-alone app for customers with Apple computer systems. Altman mentioned Codex’s growth is “insane,” in accordance to the interior message.

“This was an incredible week,” Altman wrote.

It was additionally a contentious week.

Altman and different senior executives took to social media to reply to swipes from Anthropic, which ran Tremendous Bowl adverts that poked enjoyable at OpenAI’s resolution to run adverts inside ChatGPT. In a publish on X, Altman mentioned that the commercials have been “misleading” and that OpenAI would “clearly by no means run adverts in the way in which Anthropic depicts them.”

On Monday, OpenAI will formally start testing adverts inside ChatGPT, in accordance to an individual acquainted with the matter who requested not to be named due to confidentiality. Final month the corporate mentioned the adverts will likely be clearly labeled, seem on the backside of the chatbot’s solutions and won’t affect ChatGPT’s responses.

OpenAI expects adverts to make up lower than half of its income long run, the particular person mentioned. The digital advert market has lengthy been dominated by Google and Meta, with Amazon changing into a much bigger participant in current years.

Altman and CFO Sarah Friar have been promoting traders on OpenAI’s growth story as the corporate appears to wrap up what might be a $100 billion fundraising spherical, sources informed CNBC.

In personal conferences, the executives are highlighting OpenAI’s energy with shoppers, rising enterprise enterprise and entry to compute, in accordance one particular person, who requested not to be named as a result of the talks are personal.

OpenAI has been circulating charts as a part of the discussions. One chart exhibits that Codex, primarily based on inner information, is consuming into Claude Code’s market share, in accordance to a screenshot seen by CNBC.

OpenAI expects fundraising talks to warmth up over the subsequent two weeks, one particular person mentioned. OpenAI closed a $41 billion spherical in March that included a $30 billion contribution from SoftBank and $11 billion from different traders.

The present funding spherical might shut in two components, as CNBC beforehand reported. The primary would come with capital from Microsoft and Nvidia as nicely as Amazon, which is in talks to make investments up to $50 billion in the corporate. Different contributions from contributors like SoftBank, which has mentioned placing in one other $30 billion, would observe.

The small print of the spherical are fluid and will nonetheless change.

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