Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 98% certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Sherman Wu: ChatGPT has reached 800 million weekly active users

Sherman Wu · How OpenAI Builds for 800 Million Weekly Users: Model Specialization and Fine-Tuning · Nov 28, 2025 · at 10:04

Sherwin Wu, Head of Engineering for OpenAI's Developer Platform, discusses ChatGPT's scale when explaining how OpenAI's consumer application aligns with its mission to distribute AGI benefits broadly.

0:00 / 0:05exact quote · 5.4s
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“The first party app is a really great way to get, you know it was like eight hundred million wows or whatever now.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Sherman Wu

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Sherman Wu: AI industry will shift toward specialized models
“It's, like, becoming increasingly clear that there will be room for a bunch of specialized models. There will likely be a proliferation of other types of models.”
Sherman Wu Nov 28, 2025 ▶ 0:16 How OpenAI Builds for 800 Million Weekly Users: Model Specialization and Fine-Tuning
Disclosure
Sherman Wu: OpenAI previously believed a single model would replace fine-tuning
“I remember like, even with an open AI, the thinking was that there would be like one model that rules them all. And it's like, why would you, I mean, like this kind of goes to the fine tuning API product. It's like, why would you even have a fine tuning produc…”
Sherman Wu Nov 28, 2025 ▶ 17:58 How OpenAI Builds for 800 Million Weekly Users: Model Specialization and Fine-Tuning
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Sherman Wu: OpenAI prices its API services using a cost-plus model
“Internally, one thing we do is, is we always make sure that we actually price our usage-based pricing from a, like, cost-plus perspective. Like, we're actually just, like, trying to make sure that we're being responsible from a margin perspective.”
Sherman Wu Nov 28, 2025 ▶ 32:45 How OpenAI Builds for 800 Million Weekly Users: Model Specialization and Fine-Tuning
Insight
Sherman Wu: Usage-based pricing naturally approximates outcome-based pricing in AI
“On outcome-based pricing it sounds very appealing, like, if it can work, but one thing that we've started realizing is it actually ends up correlating quite a bit with usage-based pricing, especially with test time compute. Like, if the thing is just, like, th…”
Sherman Wu Nov 28, 2025 ▶ 35:53 How OpenAI Builds for 800 Million Weekly Users: Model Specialization and Fine-Tuning
What-if
Sherman Wu: Replicating OpenAI's flagship model inference performance is extremely hard
“Even if we just like, you know, open source, like if we just literally open sourced GPT-V or something, it would be really, really hard to inference it at the level that we are able to get it to do.”
Sherman Wu Nov 28, 2025 ▶ 39:53 How OpenAI Builds for 800 Million Weekly Users: Model Specialization and Fine-Tuning
Assertion Supported
Sherman Wu: 10% of the global population uses ChatGPT weekly
“10% of the globe uses it weekly.”
Sherman Wu Nov 28, 2025 ▶ 0:08 How OpenAI Builds for 800 Million Weekly Users: Model Specialization and Fine-Tuning
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