It was launched «expecting a small research audience,» OpenAI’s Nick Turley says on x.com, but «within hours, the usage was far beyond anything we’d prepared for.»
Launch page is still live
On the preserved introduction page at OpenAI, it says «we are presenting ChatGPT, and look forward to feedback from users to learn more about the strengths and weaknesses of the model.»
Farhad Manjoo wrote on it in The New York Times, calling it both «amazing,» «spooky,» «humbling, and «more than a little terrifying.»
Incredible growth in three years
From these humble beginnings just three years ago, OpenAI now boasts over 800 million users per week, TechCrunch reported on October 6, 2025.
It was also the inadvertent dawn of the AI age, with increasingly capable models from AI Labs looking for Artificial General Intelligence, some $1.4 trillion in spending on infrastructure from OpenAI and now models that routinely wins gold in astrophysics and mathematical Olympiads.
ChatGPT is 3 years old today!
We launched expecting a small research audience. Within hours, the usage was far beyond anything we’d prepared for. Since then, hundreds of millions of people have pushed us to make it more reliable, more capable, and more helpful.
Thank you to…
— Nick Turley (@nickaturley) November 30, 2025
Read more: OpenAI: Introducing ChatGPT.