As OpenAI faces intensifying pressure from rival Anthropic’s improved coding tools, CEO Sam Altman is telling employees and investors that his company is seeing its share of momentum.
Altman told OpenAI employees on Friday that ChatGPT, the company’s popular artificial intelligence chatbot, is “back to exceeding 10% monthly growth,” according to an internal Slack message viewed by CNBC. OpenAI is also preparing to launch “an updated Chat model” this week, Altman said.
More than 800 million people use ChatGPT each week, but Google and Anthropic have been gaining ground. OpenAI declared a “code red” in December to improve ChatGPT, and temporarily sidelined several projects to focus on that effort.
In his message on Friday, Altman said OpenAI’s coding product, Codex, grew about 50% from a week ago. Codex competes directly with Anthropic’s Claude Code, which has seen a wave of adoption over the last year.
OpenAI launched a new Codex model, GPT‑5.3-Codex, last week, as well as a stand-alone app for users with Apple computers. Altman said Codex’s growth is “insane,” according to the internal message.
“This was a great week,” Altman wrote.
It was also a contentious week.
Altman and other senior executives took to social media to respond to swipes from Anthropic, which ran Super Bowl ads that poked fun at OpenAI’s decision to run ads within ChatGPT. In a post on X, Altman said that the commercials were “deceptive” and that OpenAI would “obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them.”
On Monday, OpenAI will officially begin testing ads within ChatGPT, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. Last month the company said the ads will be clearly labeled, appear at the bottom of the chatbot’s answers and will not influence ChatGPT’s responses.
OpenAI expects ads to make up less than half of its revenue long term, the person said. The digital ad market has long been dominated by Google and Meta, with Amazon becoming a bigger player in recent years.
Message to investors
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attend an event to pitch AI for businesses in Tokyo, Japan Feb. 3, 2025.
Kim Kyung-Hoon | Reuters
Altman and CFO Sarah Friar have been selling investors on OpenAI’s growth story as the company looks to wrap up what could be a $100 billion fundraising round, sources told CNBC.
In private meetings, the executives are highlighting OpenAI’s strength with consumers, growing enterprise business and access to compute, according one person, who asked not to be named because the talks are private.
OpenAI has been circulating charts as part of the discussions. One chart shows that Codex, based on internal data, is eating into Claude Code’s market share, according to a screenshot seen by CNBC.
OpenAI expects fundraising talks to heat up over the next two weeks, one person said. OpenAI closed a $41 billion round in March than included a $30 billion contribution from SoftBank and $11 billion from other investors.
The current funding round could close in two parts, as CNBC previously reported. The first would include capital from Microsoft and Nvidia as well as Amazon, which is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in the company. Other contributions from participants like SoftBank, which has discussed putting in another $30 billion, would follow.
The details of the round are fluid and could still change.
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