OpenAI announced on Friday, the 31st, that its artificial intelligence platform has surpassed the one billion active user mark and now serves over two million companies. This milestone was reached after the company implemented a reduction in the costs of some models in the GPT-5.6 series.
The company justified the price reduction with internal efficiency gains, which resulted in lower operating costs, enabling it to offer AI tools at a more accessible price. The changes primarily affected the GPT-5.6 Luna and GPT-5.6 Terra models, while the GPT-5.6 Sol maintained its original price.
This strategic move occurs amid growing competition in the artificial intelligence market, where other companies are reassessing their investments in the technology and seeking lower-cost solutions. OpenAI stated that the goal of this tariff reduction is to encourage new applications of AI.
OpenAI implemented an 80% cut in the price charged for GPT-5.6 Luna and a 20% discount on GPT-5.6 Terra. With these modifications, Luna is now priced at US$ 0.20 per million input tokens and US$ 1.20 per million output tokens, compared to previous values of US$ 1 and US$ 6, respectively. GPT-5.6 Terra saw its fee drop to US$ 2 per million input tokens and US$ 12 per million output tokens, down from US$ 2.50 and US$ 15.
GPT-5.6 Sol, presented by the company as the most sophisticated model in the family, had no change in its price. The company clarified that these discounts were made possible by improvements gained during system development, including the use of AI itself to optimize production software and refinements in the response generation process, known as speculative decoding.
According to OpenAI, these adjustments led to a 20% reduction in end-to-end operating costs and increased token production efficiency by over 15%. Furthermore, the company highlighted improvements in the context management of GPT-5.6 Sol, which raised its performance on the ARC-AGI-3 test from 13.3% to 38.3%, using six times fewer output tokens.
Addressing pricing policy, OpenAI stated that the decrease expands the range of economically viable tasks with artificial intelligence, declaring in a statement: 'When the cost of useful intelligence drops, more work becomes worthwhile.'
The price change happens in an environment of greater caution from corporate clients, who have questioned substantial investments in artificial intelligence without a clear projection of financial return. According to The Wall Street Journal, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, admitted that the cost of services was becoming a barrier for some business users.
Competition also influenced this decision. OpenAI spent weeks analyzing the possibility of lowering tariffs, considering the emergence of more economical models offered by rivals, such as Anthropic, and by open-source Chinese systems. The company compared its new values with those practiced by competitors and noted that Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.6 costs US$ 3 per million input tokens and US$ 15 per million output tokens, placing it above the new range of GPT-5.6 Terra.
Beyond user base growth, OpenAI reported that the volume of interactions increases over time. The company informed that six months after registration, users send about 50% more messages daily and use ChatGPT for approximately double the types of tasks.
The company also highlighted the advancement in the use of artificial intelligence agents in software development. Data released by OpenAI shows that agents operated by Codex, a programming-focused tool, account for 99.8% of the output tokens consumed internally by the company weekly. Despite this expansion, the financial indicators presented in the text indicate that the organization still operates at a loss, with revenues of US$ 13.07 billion in 2025 and a negative result of US$ 38.5 billion in the same period, according to the American newspaper.
