OpenAI’s chief operating officer Brad Lightcap said the company’s ChatGPT service has surpassed five million paying business users, underscoring robust corporate demand for generative-AI tools less than two years after the product’s launch. People familiar with the figures added that enterprise subscriptions jumped about 66 percent in July, helped by larger roll-outs and the conversion of pilot projects into full deployments. Companies are embedding the large-language-model platform in software development, customer support and marketing workflows, boosting OpenAI’s recurring revenue base. The new milestone strengthens OpenAI’s financial position as it pushes ahead with GPT-5, the planned successor to GPT-4 released in 2023. Reporting by The Information has described technical hurdles and rising costs that have slowed work on the next-generation model, a reminder that progress in the broader AI sector may be moderating even as adoption of existing systems accelerates.