There’s been a lot of talk lately that the major GPT-5 upgrade, or whatever OpenAI ends up calling it, is coming to ChatGPT soon. As you’ll see below, a Samsung exec might have used the GPT-5 moniker in a presentation earlier this week, even though OpenAI has yet to make this designator official. The point is the world is waiting for a big ChatGPT upgrade, especially considering that Google also teased big Gemini improvements that are coming later this year.
The best proof that OpenAI might be close to launching an even more capable ChatGPT variant is a rumor concerning internal discussions about new ChatGPT subscription plans. OpenAI is apparently considering prices that go up to $2,000 per month for access to its models, which is 100 times what ChatGPT Plus currently costs.
I’d speculate that OpenAI is considering these prices for enterprise customers rather than regular genAI users. Whatever the case, the figure implies OpenAI made big improvements to ChatGPT, and that they might be available soon — including the GPT-5 upgrade everyone is waiting for.
I’m a paying ChatGPT Plus subscriber, even though I would probably get the same features on the free tier. The Plus should give me better access to the latest models, including GPT-4o and Voice Mode. However, the latter is not available in Europe.
I’m ready to pay for premium genAI models rather than go for the free versions. I’ve said that before. But I’m not the kind of ChatGPT user who would go for the purported $2,000 plan. The figure comes from The Information, a trusted source of tech leaks.
Apparently, OpenAI executives have been discussing new price tiers for premium ChatGPT access. That’s where the $2,000 monthly plan came up.
The Information says the expensive subscription would give users access to upcoming products. OpenAI has been working on two separate initiatives that have both leaked in recent months.
One is called Strawberry internally, a ChatGPT variant that would gain the ability to reason and perform better internet research. I’ll remind you that Google wants to bring better reasoning and deep research to Gemini this fall.
The other popped up in reports more recently. It’s called Orion, and it’s a more advanced large language model. Orion might be the actual successor of GPT-4o. OpenAI might use Strawberry to generate more high-quality data training sets for Orion. OpenAI reportedly wants to reduce hallucinations that genAI chatbots are infamous for.
Is Orion going to be called GPT-5? There’s no indication of what naming scheme OpenAI will use for.
Some of these leaks might be wrong. But even without leaks, it’s enough to look at what Google is doing to realize OpenAI must be working on a response. Even the likes of Samsung’s chip division expect next-gen models like GPT-5 to launch soon, and they’re trying to estimate the requirements of next-gen chatbots.
As for that $2,000 ChatGPT subscription, I don’t see regular ChatGPT users considering such a plan. However enterprise customers and app developers might pay more to access the best possible ChatGPT chatbot OpenAI can offer.
On that note, it’s unclear whether OpenAI can raise the base subscription for ChatGPT Plus. I’d say it’s impossible right now, considering that Google also charges $20 a month for Gemini Advanced, which also gets you 2TB of cloud storage. Moreover, Google offers Pixel 9 buyers a free year of Gemini Advanced access.
Then again, OpenAI wants to make money. As Reuters reports, the company has 1 million paying users across its business products, ChatGPT Enterprise, Team, and Edu. That’s a significant increase from April, when OpenAI reported 600,000 enterprise users.
The free ChatGPT tier has hundreds of millions of users each month. OpenAI said that ChatGPT has more than 200 million active users per week, or double the figure announced last fall.
Moreover, OpenAI is looking to raise more capital, which will see the company reach a $100 billion valuation. Apple and Nvidia are among the rumored investors. In late 2023, OpenAI was valued at $86 billion.
Finally, I’ll point out one more obvious development. All of this talk that implies a GPT-5 upgrade is imminent is happening ahead of the iPhone 16 event on Monday. OpenAI is Apple’s big AI partner for Apple Intelligence.
ChatGPT will be available for free to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 users who choose to use Apple Intelligence on their devices. It’ll also be available on M-series iPads and Macs that can run Apple’s AI. This could bring a major influx of new ChatGPT users, including potential paying subscribers.
That said, ChatGPT won’t be available on the iPhone 16 at launch. It’ll likely be enabled via an iOS 18.1 update in the coming months. It’ll be interesting to see whether OpenAI delivers its big GPT-5 upgrade before Apple enables ChatGPT in iOS 18.
