Open AI CEO Sam Altman speaks during a talk session with SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son at an event titled "Transforming Business through AI" in Tokyo, on Feb. 3, 2025.
As OpenAI faces intensifying pressure from rival Anthropic's improved coding tools, CEO Sam Altman is telling employees and investors that his company is seeing its share of momentum.
Altman told OpenAI employees on Friday that ChatGPT, the company's popular artificial intelligence chatbot, is "back to exceeding 10% monthly growth," according to an internal Slack message viewed by CNBC. OpenAI is also preparing to launch "an updated Chat model" this week, Altman said.
More than 800 million people use ChatGPT each week, but Google and Anthropic have been gaining ground. OpenAI declared a "code red" in December to improve ChatGPT, and temporarily sidelined several projects to focus on that effort.
In his message on Friday, Altman said OpenAI's coding product, Codex, grew about 50% from a week ago. Codex competes directly with Anthropic's Claude Code, which has seen a wave of adoption over the last year.
OpenAI launched a new Codex model, GPT‑5.3-Codex, last week, as well as a stand-alone app for users with Apple computers. Altman said Codex's growth is "insane," according to the internal message.
"This was a great week," Altman wrote.