GPT-5 is out, and while I could write pages on why this model is Universal Basic Superintelligence– I instead want to focus on OpenAI’s strategic decision to deprecate all previous models in favor of GPT-5 alone, with various fine-tuned versions running quietly in the background.
It’s a full-throttle, no-looking-back blitzscale bet. And I think it will win:
By opening GPT-5 to everyone immediately, OpenAI locks in massive network effects. New users flock in, existing users upgrade en masse, and ChatGPT’s market pull intensifies. Yes, they’ll spend more to service the use of their most powerful model. GPT‑5 is priced at $1.25 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens—about half the input cost of GPT‑4o. The upside, though, is that they’ll continue to grow the number of new users integrating ChatGPT into their daily lives.
ChatGPT may be the first AI that most of the 8 billion people on our planet use. They have the opportunity to make ChatGPT synonymous with AI. This gives OpenAI the ultimate surface area to deploy any bleeding-edge capability/superpower to billions of people.
ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users just two months after launch, the fastest consumer app ever to hit that mark. In August, it surged past 700 million WAU. By contrast, Facebook needed 53 months to reach its first 100 million users and 67 months to reach the top 300 million.
OpenAI realizes that the more people who build GPT-5 into their routines, the stronger the moat. Usage becomes habit, and habit becomes infrastructure. So, not only do they have to continue scaling—they plan to hit a billion WAU by year's end—but they have to build real user enjoyment. And that means building for a wider audience and focusing on different things than just power benchmarks.
This emphasis on user experience was clear throughout today’s launch event. In many ways, OpenAI prioritized showcasing user experience over raw model performance. In healthcare, they highlighted that they’d tailored GPT-5 to reflect how people are already using ChatGPT, while in coding, the focus was on interaction quality: making the experience feel fluid, intuitive, and frictionless. It felt like a product strategy designed to scale trust, usage, and ubiquity to a more consumer audience.
GPT-5 is a tangible example of the coming abundance of intelligence. It's in your pocket. It meets you and your problems where you are. Wherever in the world you are, in whatever language you speak, at whatever level you want it to, with limitless patience.
It will help farmers in India plan their crop cycles, solopreneurs scale small businesses, and educators teach students. It will help communities collaborate more efficiently, improving everyone’s quality of life.
Now OpenAI’s job is to show ChatGPT to as many people as possible.
Expectations are high for the newest version of OpenAI’s flagship model because the San Francisco company has long positioned its technical advancements as a path toward artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a technology that is supposed to surpass humans at economically valuable work.
It is also trying to raise huge amounts of money to get there, in part to pay for the costly computer chips and data centers needed to build and run the technology.
OpenAI Sam Altman described the new model as a “significant step along our path to AGI” but mostly focused on its usability to the 700 million people he says use ChatGPT each week.
“It’s like talking to an expert — a legitimate PhD-level expert in anything, any area you need, on demand,” Altman said at a launch event livestreamed Thursday.
OpenAI started in 2015 as a nonprofit research laboratory to safely build AGI and has since incorporated a for-profit company with a valuation that has grown to $300 billion. The company has tried to change its structure since the nonprofit board ousted its Altman in Nov. 2023. He was reinstated days later and continues to lead OpenAI.
It has run into hurdles escaping its nonprofit roots, including scrutiny from the attorneys general in California and Delaware, who have oversight of nonprofits, and a lawsuit by Elon Musk, an early donor to and founder of OpenAI.
Most recently, OpenAI has said it will turn its for-profit company into a public benefit corporation, which must balance the interests of shareholders and its mission.