OpenAI has announced it now serves over one million paying business customers globally, a figure that includes all organizations using ChatGPT for Work and its developer APIs. The company called it the fastest-growing business platform to date, with growth driven by large-scale consumer familiarity. Over 800 million people use ChatGPT weekly, which shortens corporate rollout times and improves early returns.
Paid enterprise usage has risen sharply, with more than seven million ChatGPT for Work seats active, up 40% in two months. ChatGPT Enterprise seats alone have grown ninefold over the past year. Codex, OpenAI’s coding model, has seen usage increase tenfold since August as companies embed automation into their workflows. Cisco has applied it across engineering to cut review cycles by half, while Carlyle used OpenAI’s AgentKit to build faster AI systems for financial analysis.
The firm has also launched new tools that connect ChatGPT with business data sources like Slack, Drive, and SharePoint, enabling direct reasoning across internal information. A new agreement with Amazon Web Services worth $38 billion provides the compute power behind these expansions. The deal gives OpenAI access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, ensuring capacity for scaling AI workloads.
A Wharton study found 75% of enterprises using OpenAI’s technology report positive returns, while fewer than 5% see negative outcomes. The company points to these findings as proof that well-planned AI use cases deliver measurable business gains. OpenAI says clients such as Lowe’s, Intercom, and Indeed have already improved hiring and customer service results using its APIs.
Alongside these milestones, OpenAI has updated its usage policies to reflect stricter safety and privacy standards. The new framework, active since late October, consolidates all prior guidelines under four principles: protecting people, respecting privacy, keeping minors safe, and empowering users responsibly.
National-security and intelligence applications now require prior approval. The company has banned unauthorized safety testing, attempts to bypass safeguards, and uses that could harm minors or expose them to unsafe content. It also broadened reporting obligations to include child-endangerment cases.
Privacy rules now prohibit aggregation or distribution of sensitive information without consent. Biometric restrictions forbid facial-recognition databases and real-time public surveillance. The update also clarifies intellectual-property protection and limits unlicensed legal or medical advice.
Political campaigns, gambling, and automated high-stakes decision-making without human review remain prohibited. Together, the policy updates and growth data show OpenAI consolidating its business reach while tightening boundaries around how its systems are used.
Notes: This post was drafted with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed, edited, and published by humans. Image: DIW-Aigen.
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