①Altman told OpenAI employees last Friday that ChatGPT’s “monthly growth rate has surpassed 10% again”; ②informed sources stated that OpenAI expects financing negotiations to significantly intensify over the next two weeks.
Cailian Press, February 10 (edited by Xia Junxiong) Amid growing competitive pressures, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman informed employees and investors that the company is maintaining strong momentum.
According to an internal Slack message seen by the media, Altman told OpenAI employees last Friday that the company's popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT had “re-surpassed a monthly growth rate of 10%.” He also mentioned that OpenAI is preparing to launch an “upgraded chat model” this week.
Currently, ChatGPT has over 800 million weekly users, but Google and Anthropic are increasingly encroaching on market share. In December last year, OpenAI announced entering a “code red” status to comprehensively improve ChatGPT, temporarily shelving multiple projects to focus resources on this goal.
In last Friday’s internal message, Altman also noted that OpenAI’s programming product Codex had grown by approximately 50% in the past week.
Codex competes directly with Anthropic’s Claude Code, which has gained substantial user adoption over the past year.
OpenAI launched a new Codex model last week — GPT-5.3-Codex — and released a standalone application for Apple computer users. According to internal messages, Altman described Codex’s growth as “absolutely insane.”
“It was a fantastic week,” Altman wrote.
Messages to Investors
Informed sources revealed that as OpenAI approaches completing a funding round potentially worth up to $100 billion, Altman and CFO Sarah Friar are emphasizing the company’s growth story to investors.
In private discussions, the two executives emphasized OpenAI's advantages on the consumer side, its expanding enterprise business, and its access to computing power resources.
As part of the financing discussions, OpenAI presented investors with several charts. According to internal data, Codex is eroding the market share of Claude Code.
According to sources familiar with the matter, OpenAI expects financing negotiations to significantly intensify over the next two weeks.
Based on previous media reports, OpenAI’s current round of financing may be completed in two phases. The first phase may include funding from Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Amazon, with Amazon reportedly discussing an investment of up to $50 billion in OpenAI. Subsequently, there may also be additional investments from parties such as SoftBank, which has discussed contributing another $30 billion.
However, the specific details of this financing round are still in flux, and the final plan may change.
Launch advertising tests
OpenAI announced on Monday that it will begin testing ChatGPT advertisements with some free and Go package subscribers in the United States starting today.
OpenAI stated that these advertisements will be clearly labeled, displayed at the bottom of the chatbot’s responses, and will not affect the content of ChatGPT replies.
The digital advertising market has long been dominated by Google and Meta, with Amazon gradually becoming a significant player in recent years.
It is reported that OpenAI estimates that in the long term, advertising revenue will account for less than half of its total revenue.
Editor/Stephen
