"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.)"
"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."
"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.""
ChatGPT Go has moved to the United States and is priced at $8 per month. OpenAI plans to test advertising in the US for the free and Go tiers while Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscriptions will remain ad-free. Only a small share of users currently pay for higher tiers, and company projections foresee modest subscription uptake by 2030. OpenAI faces massive losses and has committed large-scale spending toward artificial general intelligence, prompting ads as a revenue strategy. Advertising revenues at major tech companies far exceed current AI revenues, and chatbots can collect highly personal user data, raising privacy concerns.
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