OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has set his sights on making ChatGPT one of the most widely used digital platforms in the world — on par with Google. In remarks following the rollout of GPT-5, Altman revealed in an interview that ChatGPT’s growth has accelerated at an extraordinary pace, quadrupling its weekly user base in just one year to more than 700 million people.

“Pretty soon, billions of people a day will be talking to ChatGPT,” Altman said. “We’re the fifth biggest website in the world right now. I think we’re on the clear path to the third.” That target would mean overtaking Instagram and Facebook, though Altman conceded that surpassing Google remains a much steeper challenge.

ChatGPT’s Meteoric Rise

The rapid adoption of ChatGPT underscores how conversational AI has become embedded in daily life. Launched publicly in late 2022, ChatGPT has grown from a viral experiment into one of the largest platforms on the internet in less than three years.

Its expansion reflects both the popularity of AI-driven productivity tools — from writing assistance to coding support — and the chatbot’s increasingly human-like conversational tone, which has helped it connect with mainstream users beyond the tech-savvy.

Altman’s bold projection suggests OpenAI sees ChatGPT not just as a tool, but as an emerging global utility, on par with the internet’s biggest social and search platforms.

The GPU Bottleneck

Yet the company’s growth ambitions are running headfirst into a hardware constraint: computing power. Altman candidly admitted that OpenAI lacks the GPU capacity needed to fully realize its technology roadmap.

“We have to make these horrible trade-offs right now,” he said. “We have better models, and we just can’t offer them because we don’t have the capacity. We have other kinds of new products and services we’d love to offer.”

GPUs (graphics processing units) are the lifeblood of modern AI development, powering both training and inference. As demand for AI soars, competition for chips from Nvidia and other manufacturers has left even leading labs constrained.

Trillions for the AI Future

To solve the bottleneck, Altman said OpenAI will pour unprecedented resources into infrastructure. Altman, continuing along this line, told reporters, “You should expect OpenAI to spend trillions of dollars on data center construction in the not very distant future.” 

Such a figure would dwarf traditional tech capital expenditures, signaling not just a long-term bet on AI, but an attempt to reshape the computing landscape itself. If realized, OpenAI’s buildout could rival — or even surpass — the scale of hyperscale cloud providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

The Road Ahead

Altman’s remarks highlight the dual reality of OpenAI’s moment: explosive user adoption paired with structural growing pains. On one hand, ChatGPT’s growth trajectory positions it as one of the internet’s most dominant platforms. On the other hand, the company’s ability to sustain that growth hinges on access to chips and data centers that are currently in short supply.

The coming years will determine whether ChatGPT truly joins the ranks of Google, Facebook, and Instagram — or whether infrastructure bottlenecks slow its ascent. For Altman, however, the vision is clear: billions of daily conversations, and a future where AI sits at the very center of the digital world.