OpenAI’s weekly active users exceed 400 million, reflecting rapid growth amid competition from Chinese AI startup DeepSeek.

In Short

OpenAI’s weekly active users exceeded 400 million in February 2025, reflecting rapid AI adoption and a doubling of paying business users since September. Meanwhile, competition from China’s DeepSeek poses challenges, with concerns over U.S. leadership in generative AI amid service outages and supply issues for DeepSeek.

In December of the previous year, OpenAI had approximately 300 million weekly active users. Additionally, the number of paying business users has now exceeded 2 million, more than doubling since September.

These figures are shared against a backdrop of competition, particularly with China’s DeepSeek, which recently launched an AI model that claims to rival Western options at lower costs. This development has raised concerns about the U.S.’s leadership in the generative AI sector.

DeepSeek’s growing demand has reportedly led to service outages, suggesting its infrastructure may be struggling to keep pace. Moreover, there are ongoing inquiries regarding DeepSeek’s access to Nvidia’s H800 chips for AI training, especially in light of export restrictions imposed by the U.S. on China.

In terms of developer engagement, OpenAI noted a twofold rise in traffic for its reasoning models over the past six months, alongside a fivefold increase for its o3 model since its launch in late January.

These developments underline OpenAI’s momentum in the artificial intelligence landscape, as reported by CNBC earlier in the day.