SAN FRANCISCO – OpenAI now has hundreds of companies paying for the corporate version of ChatGPT barely four months after launching the option, an indication of strong demand for the company’s most significant effort to make money from its best-known product.

The artificial intelligence (AI) start-up has signed up 260 enterprise customers for ChatGPT to date, chief operating officer Brad Lightcap said in an interview this week.

Those companies have more than 150,000 employees combined who are registered to use the product, he said.

OpenAI has not previously disclosed customer figures for the enterprise product.

In the year since OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT and brought AI into the public consciousness, the start-up has worked to get businesses to embrace – and pay for – the AI chatbot.

OpenAI launched ChatGPT Enterprise in August, promising added features and privacy safeguards, including data encryption and a guarantee that the start-up will not use information from customers to develop its technology.

OpenAI has said pricing for ChatGPT Enterprise can vary based on a company’s needs.

“When we launched ChatGPT Enterprise, we launched with a wait list, and we obviously had to work down the wait list,” Mr Lightcap said in the interview.

OpenAI also receives inbound interest from “tens of thousands of companies”, according to Mr Lightcap, many of which are “smaller” businesses that “don’t qualify” for the enterprise product, “but still really want that ChatGPT experience”.

On Jan 10, OpenAI announced a new paid ChatGPT tier for companies with smaller teams that starts at US$25 (S$33) a month per user.

OpenAI also offers ChatGPT Plus, a paid product for individuals that costs US$20 a month and offers access to the company’s latest AI model. BLOOMBERG