ChatGPT may be the first AI that most of the 8 billion people on our planet use. Some people don't understand why OpenAI took the risk of deprecating all previous models in favor of GPT-5. It’s a full-throttle, no-looking-back blitzscale bet. And here’s why it may win:

1/ 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.

2/ 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.

3/ For context: 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.

4/ By contrast, Facebook needed 53 months to reach its first 100 million users and 67 months to top 300 million.

5/ OpenAI realizes that the more people who build GPT-5 into their routines, the stronger the moat. Usage becomes habit, habit becomes infrastructure.

6/ So, not only do they have to continue scaling –– they plan to hit a billion WAU by year's end –– they have to build real user enjoyment.

7/ That means building for a wider audience and focusing on different things than just power benchmarks.

8/ This emphasis on user experience was clear throughout the GPT-5 launch event. In many ways, OpenAI prioritized showcasing user experience over raw model performance.

9/ 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 frictionless.

10/ It felt like a product strategy designed to scale trust, usage, and ubiquity to a more consumer audience.

11/ 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.

12/ 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.

13/ Now OpenAI’s job is to show ChatGPT to as many people as possible.