5 Minutes

40+ Important ChatGPT Statistics to Know

As artificial intelligence technology continues to advance, language models like ChatGPT are pushing the boundaries of what's possible.

With its advanced capabilities in natural language processing and machine learning, ChatGPT has become one of the most sophisticated language models in the world. Its ability to understand and generate text in multiple languages and learn from vast amounts of data has made it an invaluable tool in various industries. But just how impressive are ChatGPT's capabilities? Here are some key ChatGPT statistics that showcase the scale, complexity and even limitations of this incredible language model.

Key ChatGPT Statistics:

ChatGPT's impressive capabilities have drawn the attention of millions of users around the world. Within just one week of its launch, ChatGPT attracted one million users, and within two months, it had reached a staggering 100 million users, setting a record-breaking pace for any platform.

  • ChatGPT attracted 1 million users within a week.
  • ChatGPT attracted 100 million users two months after launch.
  • Currently, the highest Google search volume for ChatGPT comes from China, even though it is banned in that country.
  • It is forecasted that ChatGPT will generate $200 million in revenue in 2023
  • Microsoft invested $10B in the company, gaining 46% ownership
  • The first version of ChatGPT is GPT-1 which was released in 2018
  • GPT-3 has 175 billion parameters vs. ChatGPT’s 20 billion parameters
  • GPT-4 was released on March 14 and contains 100 trillion parameters.

What is ChatGPT and How Does it Work?

ChatGPT is a chatbot based on the GPT model, which is an AI language model developed by OpenAI that can understand and generate responses in human language.

You can imagine ChatGPT’s brain as a huge library full of books and articles on the web. Each book is like a “parameter” and the more books there are, the more it knows. If you ask it a question, from studying all the text on the web, it’ll know how to respond in human language and provide a fairly accurate answer.

ChatGPT vs. GPT-3/4

There are several differences between GPT-3 and ChatGPT:

  1. GPT-3 is a large scale, language generation model developed by OpenAI
  2. ChatGPT is built using the language model of the GPT-3 series (GPT-3.5 to be exact)
  3. ChatGPT is finetuned on conversation data whilst GPT-3 is finetuned on human instruction.
  4. This allows it to act more like a chatbot where users can write follow-up responses to the answers it provides. This is not possible with GPT-3
  5. ChatGPT is also more creative in its responses, but is also more likely to provide factually incorrect responses.

ChatGPT Training Data

  • The training dataset contains 300 billion words from books, Wikipedia, research journals, web articles and more
  • In total, there were over 570+ GB of text
  • 1000 NVIDIA V100 GPUs (a $10,000+ GPU) were used for training
  • ChatGPT was fine tuned using several GBs of conversational data

When was ChatGPT Launched?

ChatGPT launched on 30 November 2022, however, it was not until January 2023 when it really gained search interest, peaking at February:

Interest in ChatGPT by Region/Country:

  • Current there is extremely high search volume for ChatGPT in China, scoring 100
  • Singapore takes second place at a score of 27
  • United States is nowhere near the top
  • These results indicate high search interest from Asian countries

Live Google Trends Data:

How long has OpenAI as a company existed?

OpenAI was founded on 10 December 2015 - 7 years prior to the launch of ChatGPT.

Who is Behind ChatGPT?

The organization was founded in San Francisco by:

  • Sam Altman (2015 - present)
  • Elon Musk (2015 - 2018)
  • Greg Brockman (2015 - present)
  • Ilya Sutskever (2015 - present)
  • Wojciech Zaremba (2015 - present)

Sam Altman is the current CEO of ChatGPT as of 2023. Altmann is a software engineer, entrepreneur and investor who was also the former president of Y Combinator.

Elon Musk stepped down from the board in 2018 to avoid conflict with Tesla, but still remains an active donor and advisor. 

A list of donors can be found on the OpenAI supporters page.

ChatGPT Funding

OpenAI has raised $11B in funding as of Feb 2023 with Microsoft being one of the lead investors.

  • Microsoft invested $10B in OpenAI, gaining 46% ownership in the company
  • Microsoft had also invested $1B in an earlier funding round.
  • The valuation of OpenAI reached $29B in 2023

Other investors include: Matthew Brown Companies, Bedrock Capital, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global Management, Khosla Ventures, Reid Hoffman Foundation and Y Combinator.

ChatGPT Growth & User Statistics

ChatGPT’s growth has been nothing short of spectacular and here are some growth statistics to back it up:

ChatGPT Growth Statistics
Data: Polymer Search
  • In the first month after launch, ChatGPT had over 57 million active users. 
  • ChatGPT reached 100 million active users in January 2023
  • Reports from SimilarWeb indicate it gained 13 million users per day in January
  • In terms of website traffic, OpenAI received 590 million total visits in January.
  • 3 months after launching, OpenAI ranks 27th globally for the most popular website (behind Pinterest at 26th)
  • By the end of 2023, it is expected that ChatGPT will have over 1 billion users

ChatGPT Active Users

ChatGPT Active Users
Data: Polymer Search

The number of active users are as follows:

  • December 5th – 1+ million users
  • January 1st – 57+ million users
  • February 1st – 100+ million users

ChatGPT Revenue Statistics

In February 2023, ChatGPT announced their first monetization model: the introduction of ChatGPT plus which costs $20/month. This subscription will give users faster response times and priority access during peak hours.

A month later, they unveiled the ChatGPT API for $0.002 per 1k tokens - 10x cheaper than existing GPT 3.5 models.

These are currently their two monetization models. OpenAI has also stated that the service will continue to remain free.

  • It cost ChatGPT approximately $3 million to run in December 2022. The cost has exponentially increased ever since. 
  • It is forecasted that in 2023, ChatGPT will achieve $200 million in revenue
  • The value of OpenAI after the release of ChatGPT was valued at $29 billion
  • OpenAI predicts they will generate $1 billion in revenue by the end of 2024.
  • The total addressable market for ChatGPT is estimated to be $1 trillion

ChatGPT Limitations

There are several limitations to ChatGPT:

  • ChatGPT cannot access the internet to report on live events
  • ChatGPT was trained on data prior to Sept. 2021, therefore, it can’t fetch data after 2021
  • ChatGPT tends to provide many factually incorrect answers, despite being confident in its tone which can be misleading to many users
  • ChatGPT can produce plagiarized content.
  • OpenAI released a tool called the AI Text Classifier which allows detection of AI-generated content.
  • Due to harmful content being produced by ChatGPT, OpenAI had to add specific limitations to the model, limiting the answers it can provide. 

Countries Where ChatGPT Isn’t Available

ChatGPT isn’t available in the following countries:

  1. China
  2. Russia
  3. Ukraine
  4. Afghanistan
  5. Iran
  6. Belarus
  7. Venezuela

Big Tech in China are heavily against the idea of ChatGPT and large corporations such as WeChat has banned applications that involve ChatGPT.

However, as mentioned before, the search interest for ChatGPT is the highest in China, indicating that users are using work-arounds to access it (VPNs).

Furthermore, it is expected that China will create their own version of ChatGPT.

GPT-4 Statistics

GPT-4 was released on 14 March 2023.

Here are some statistics about GPT-4:

  • GPT-4 was trained on 100 trillion parameters. This is equal to the human brain in terms of parameters.
  • OpenAI is developing a mobile app run by GPT-4
  • GPT-4 has superior reasoning ability and creativity than ChatGPT-3.5
  • GPT-4 has a memory of 32,000 tokens (approximately 25,000 words) vs. GPT-3.5's 4000 tokens (approx. 3125 words)
  • GPT-4 is currently only available to ChatGPT Plus members or through the API waitlist for developers
  • Unlike previous GPTs, GPT-4 is multi-modal and can analyze images such as identify trends in a graph
  • The cost of GPT-4's API is $0.03 / 1K tokens for the prompt and $0.06 / 1K tokens for the completion. This is for the 8K context model. For the 32K context model (higher memory) the pricing is doubled.
  • For GPT-4's 8K context model, the cost of text completion is 30 times more than GPT-3.5 and 15 times more for text input.

ChatGPT's Impact on Industries

The rise of ChatGPT isn't just about impressive numbers; it's also about the transformative impact it has had across various sectors:

  • Education: ChatGPT serves as a digital tutor, assisting students worldwide with homework and complex subjects, making learning more interactive.
  • Healthcare: Medical professionals utilize ChatGPT to gain insights into rare conditions, while patients use it as a preliminary diagnostic tool.
  • E-commerce: Businesses harness ChatGPT for customer service, providing instant responses to client queries, thereby enhancing user experience.
  • Content Creation: Writers and marketers use ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas, draft content, and even for SEO strategies.
  • Research: Academics and researchers employ ChatGPT to sift through vast amounts of data, making the research process more efficient.

The adaptability of ChatGPT across these sectors showcases its versatility and underscores its revolutionary potential.

Future Predictions: Where is ChatGPT Headed?

With its current trajectory, ChatGPT is poised for even greater heights. Here's what the future might hold:

  • Increased User Base: Given its current growth rate, ChatGPT is expected to surpass 1 billion users by 2025, making it one of the most used AI platforms globally.
  • Multimodal Capabilities: Future iterations might not just be limited to text. We could see ChatGPT understanding and generating multimedia content, from images to videos.
  • Better Personalization: As AI models become more sophisticated, ChatGPT could offer a more personalized user experience, understanding individual user preferences and needs.
  • Ethical and Regulatory Challenges: As with all AI, ChatGPT will face ethical dilemmas, especially concerning data privacy and misuse. Regulatory bodies might enforce stricter guidelines to ensure responsible AI use.
  • Collaborations and Partnerships: Given its potential, major tech companies might collaborate with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into their platforms, amplifying its reach and capabilities.

While these predictions offer a glimpse into the future, the true potential of ChatGPT, like all technologies, will be shaped by how we choose to use and develop it.

Further AI Reading

Posted on
August 10, 2023
under Blog
August 10, 2023
Written by
Rand Owens
Founding team member at Motive (Formerly KeepTruckin) and passionate about all things Marketing, RevOps, and Go-To-Market. VP of Marketing @ Polymer Search.

Explore Our E-commerce Business Intelligence Templates

Browse All Templates

Related Articles

Browse All Templates
No items found.

Start using Polymer right now. Free for 7 days.

See for yourself how fast and easy it is to uncover profitable insights hidden in your data. Get started today, free for 7 days.

Try Polymer For Free