ChatGPT Pass 800M Weekly Users, 10M subscribers - down from 20M in April (techafricanews.com)

ChatGPT has crossed an estimated 800 million weekly active users as of Sept–Oct 2025 and is on track to hit one billion by year-end, marking one of the fastest adoption curves in consumer tech. The platform doubled its user base in under a year, driven by deep integration into personal and professional workflows. Financially, ChatGPT generated roughly $3.7 billion in 2024 alone and reached a $10 billion annual revenue run rate by mid‑2025; ChatGPT Plus tops 10 million subscribers and 92% of Fortune 100 companies now use the service. Usage skews young (nearly half under 25), while access remains blocked in 15 countries over sovereignty and political concerns. Competitors such as Anthropic, Google Gemini, and Meta AI remain active but haven’t matched ChatGPT’s scale. The milestone matters because it cements generative AI as foundational infrastructure for communication, creativity, and productivity, shifting the industry focus from prototype to governance and scale. OpenAI now faces intensified regulatory scrutiny — EU AI Act enforcement, U.S. congressional reviews, and national policies — centered on data privacy, transparency, and model safety. Technically, the company is racing to maintain its lead with next‑generation work on GPT‑5 and advanced multimodal systems, while governments accelerate investment in domestic models and infrastructure to reduce foreign dependence. The near term challenge isn’t user growth but navigating regulation, safety, and competitive innovation at planetary scale.