OpenAI was founded in 2015 as a non-profit research laboratory. It now functions as a hybrid, but is also a public benefit corporation as of 2025. Its founders have stated that they want to use their research to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), which will be beneficial to humanity.
OpenAI was founded in December 2015 as a non-profit organization by Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and Elon Musk with a $1 billion investment pool from investors such as Peter Thiel, AWS, Infosys, and YC Research.
To address the high-capital costs associated with creating "foundation models" used in generative AI, OpenAI created a capped-profit for-profit subsidiary under the direct oversight of the non-profit OpenAI Foundation.
OpenAI released ChatGPT, which rapidly gained 100 million users and led to widespread adoption of generative AI technology globally. As a result, OpenAI became a major player in the recent AI boom.
OpenAI began to transition away from the capped-profit structure and toward a new governance structure with increased oversight mechanisms.
On October 15, 2025, OpenAI transitioned from a public benefit corporation (OpenAI Group PBC) to a public benefit corporation (OpenAI Group PBC) structure. This transition involved the conversion of the for-profit subsidiary to a public benefit corporation while retaining control of the subsidiary through the non-profit OpenAI Foundation. The transition occurred after lengthy negotiations with California and Delaware regulators. These negotiations resulted in commitments by OpenAI to retain its headquarters in California, maintain the non-profit OpenAI Foundation as the parent entity, and establish new safety measures designed to protect users and promote safe use of generative AI.
Azure-based supercomputing platform provided by Microsoft; distributed computing infrastructure supporting large-scale model training and inference.
State-of-the-art large language models built on transformer architecture with advanced deep learning techniques, trained on diverse datasets to enable general-purpose conversational AI with broad knowledge and reasoning capabilities.
Based on official OpenAI documentation and company partnerships; Azure infrastructure confirmed through Microsoft collaboration
| Service | Cost | Details | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/month | GPT-4o mini, limited GPT-4o access, web browsing, file and image uploads, basic data analysis, access to custom GPTs. Message caps vary by demand. | OpenAI official pricing |
| ChatGPT Go | $8/month | 10x more messages than free tier, expanded access to GPT-5.2 Instant, file uploads, image creation, longer memory retention. Localized pricing in some markets. | OpenAI official launch |
| ChatGPT Plus | $20/month | Full GPT-4, GPT-4o, and GPT-4o mini access, o1-preview and o1-mini reasoning models, 5x more messages (40-50 per 3 hours), DALL-E image generation, advanced voice mode, custom GPTs, 32K token context, 10 Deep Research queries/month, Sora video generation (50 videos at 720p) | OpenAI official pricing |
| ChatGPT Pro | $200/month | o1 pro mode with enhanced reasoning, unlimited access to o1, o1-mini, GPT-4o and voice, 128K token context, Sora Pro (unlimited slow generations, 500 priority 1080p videos), 120 Deep Research queries/month, Operator access (US only) | OpenAI official pricing |
| ChatGPT Team | $30/user/month (monthly) or $25/user/month (annual) | Minimum 2 users. 100 messages per 3 hours, shared workspace, admin tools, build and share custom team GPTs, data not used for training, enhanced security. 33% nonprofit discount available. | OpenAI official pricing |
| Enterprise | Custom quote | For organizations 150+ users. Unlimited access, SSO/SAML support, audit logs, role-based access, dedicated support, SLA. ~50% nonprofit discount available. | OpenAI official pricing |
| Feature | ChatGPT | Claude (Anthropic) | Gemini (Google) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Price | $8/month (Go) | $20/month | Free tier available |
| Free Tier | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced Reasoning Model | Yes (o1) | Yes (Claude 3.5) | Yes (Gemini 2) |
| API Access | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Enterprise SSO | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Voice/Multimodal | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Image Generation | Yes (DALL-E) | No | Yes (Imagen) |
| Video Generation | Yes (Sora) | No | Limited |
| Reasoning Model Compute | High (o1 pro) | High | Medium |
| SOC 2/Enterprise Features | Yes | Yes | Yes |
ChatGPT and Claude both offer General-Purpose Conversational AI capabilities. ChatGPT provides more advanced reasoning capabilities than Claude, and superior image and video generation capabilities. ChatGPT also offers more integrations into other products and services. Claude is focused more on Constitution AI and Safety. ChatGPT has more breadth in terms of features, while Claude excels at specific types of reasoning.
Choose ChatGPT For Maximum Capability And Creative Tools, Choose Claude For Safety-Conscious Applications.
Google Gemini Offers Deep Integration with Google Workspace and the Android Ecosystem. ChatGPT has more advanced reasoning capabilities than Gemini, superior video-generation capabilities, and greater standalone-product-maturity. Gemini provides better integration with Search, while ChatGPT provides better Innovation Velocity through its ability to innovate independently.
Choose ChatGPT For Best-In-Class Reasoning And Creative Feature Sets, Choose Gemini For Google Workspace Ecosystem Integration.
Microsoft Bundles Copilot with Office 365 and Windows. Although Copilot uses the same model as ChatGPT, Copilot is primarily designed for Enterprise Users within the Microsoft Ecosystem. Stand-alone ChatGPT Provides More Control Over Its Features, Flexibility in Usage, and Advanced Features Compared to Copilot. Copilot Is Best Used For Users Already Invested in the Microsoft Ecosystem.
Choose ChatGPT For Maximum Control And Advanced Features, Choose Copilot If Already Invested In The Microsoft Ecosystem.
Most Niche Competitors Focus On A Single Use Case (Copywriting, Marketing, etc.). ChatGPT Offers General-Purpose Capabilities That Are Superior To Specialized Tools In Terms Of Functionality. However, The Specialized Tools Often Have Domain-Specific Optimizations And Templates.
General purpose AI via ChatGPT; Deep Domain Optimization via Specialized Tools.
For any billing or account related questions, use the Help Chat Widget located at help.openai.com (lower right-hand corner). For any other type of support question, use the support@openai.com address. Using the help chat widget will result in a faster response from support personnel.
Yes, there is a difference. While there is a "Help" section in the Open AI portal, there is no direct phone contact method for obtaining technical assistance. Technical assistance is provided through the help chat widget and/or email only. Enterprise customers may have further escalation methods.
Please include the following information in your request: • A clear description of the problem you are experiencing. • Steps to reproduce the problem. • Timestamps (with your time zone). • Relevant IDs. • Screenshots or recordings. • Avoid providing personally identifiable information or sensitive data.
Response times vary greatly. The help chat widget typically receives responses within hours, but the email support can take anywhere from several weeks to months or even years depending on the current volume of support requests.
Requests for refunds should be made via the help.openai.com support portal. Regardless of how much usage you perform during the billing period, Open AI charges the entire amount for the month. Therefore, be sure to review their billing policies prior to making any purchases.
The Open AI developer community has been active since 2020 with community champions and 300,000+ users that can assist in answering questions, as well as providing potential solutions.
After using the automated assistance provided, if you still require further assistance, you can escalate your issue via the chat widget by selecting “Send Us A Message” or reaching out to support@openai.com. Referring to accessibility concerns or compliance issues may increase the chances of having a human review your issue.
Use the chat widget available at help.openai.com with as much detail as possible regarding the problem you are experiencing, or post your problem within the ChatGPT section of the OpenAI Developer Community Forum.
ChatGPT provides multi-channel support, primarily through a chat widget located at help.openai.com and email; however, user feedback suggests that there are many quality issues with regards to support including long wait times when sending emails (users report 28+ unanswered emails), incorrect responses from the chatbots, and unclear paths to escalate issues. Access to support also depends upon the type of account used, with Enterprise accounts possibly being supported better than other types of accounts.
Good - based on official OpenAI help documentation, user community discussions, and direct user experiences shared in the OpenAI Developer Community Forum
| Benchmark | Performance | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU | State-of-the-art | Multi-task language understanding |
| Codeforces | New records | Competitive programming benchmarks |
| SWE-bench | State-of-the-art | Software engineering tasks |
| MMMU | State-of-the-art | Multimodal understanding |
| Error Rate | 20% fewer errors vs o1 | On difficult real-world tasks |
| Mathematics | Exceptional performance | Competition-level math problems |
Uses natural language prompts and multi-turn conversations
Creates generated text, code and structured data
Analyzes and understands images, documents, charts, and PDFs
Has image creation capabilities
Supports real-time voice conversation with audio processing layers
Provides natural speech synthesis with multiple voice options
Processes spreadsheets, documents and uploaded files
| Plan | Features | Model Access | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Limited daily messages | GPT-5 (restricted) | Entry-level access with lower limits |
| Plus | Unlimited standard messages | GPT-5, Thinking, Instant | Full UI access with premium features |
| Team | Shared workspace | GPT-5 family | Collaborative team environment |
| Enterprise | Custom quotas and controls | GPT-5 family | Security, compliance, and data governance |
GPT-5 Thinking mode presents a visual representation of how it thinks through a solution to a complex problem with higher accuracy
Both GPT-5 Standard (Thorough) and GPT-5 Instant (Fast) modes use the same architectural foundation but will dynamically route based on the complexity of the request.
Allows for longer reasoning times for more complicated multi-step tasks with strategic thinking capabilities
Code generation is enhanced with better debugging and can be used in multiple languages.
Web searches are integrated to provide timely information.
Routing of requests to best possible internal versions is done automatically by a program which determines whether it is faster or if there will be less delay in response time.
The user does not have to manually switch models when new behavioral changes are made.
Accessible across major platforms with enterprise deployment options through Azure and custom integrations
All potentially unsafe or damaging content is automatically removed prior to being displayed to the end-user.
A reinforcement learning process is implemented using feedback from humans to ensure that the responses given are aligned and safe to the human user.
A secondary training on specific data sets may also be conducted to further enhance the performance and safety of the AI.
The "Thinking" mode in GPT-5 provides greater adherence to constraints through the use of deliberative responses.
Enterprise users can rely on data governance guarantees and administrative controls.
Errors were reduced by 20% when comparing this model to its predecessors with difficult, real world tasks.
