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OpenAI has reached a significant milestone, with its AI models now serving over 1 billion active users and 2 million businesses. This surge in adoption comes as the company slashes prices for its GPT-5.6 models, intensifying the ongoing cost race in the AI industry. The tech giant disclosed the figures on July 31, four years after the launch of ChatGPT.

OpenAI's announcement also highlights the company's strategy to make AI more affordable through lower pricing and enhanced infrastructure efficiency. As more users gain confidence in the technology, they are engaging with it more deeply, sending nearly 50% more messages daily six months after joining and utilizing ChatGPT for twice as many tasks.

The user base encompasses OpenAI's consumer and enterprise products, including ChatGPT, Codex, and ChatGPT Work. The milestone follows a recent price cut of 80% for GPT-5.6 Luna and 20% for GPT-5.6 Terra, with Luna now costing $0.20 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens, while Terra remains at $2 and $12. OpenAI's internal testing with GPT-5.6 Sol has improved end-to-end serving costs by 20% and token-generation efficiency by over 15%.

The company also reported that context management and retained reasoning improvements boosted GPT-5.6 Sol's ARC-AGI-3 benchmark score from 13.3% to 38.3% while using six times fewer output tokens. This rapid adoption of AI tools underscores their mainstream presence while highlighting the challenges AI providers face in balancing lower prices with maintaining profit margins as they continue investing billions in new models and infrastructure.