Earlier today, OpenAI rolled out its AI agent Operator for ChatGPT Pro users in Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, India, the U.K., Singapore, and a few other countries. OpenAI mentioned that the AI agent will be available in almost all the countries where ChatGPT is accessible, except Iceland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Norway, and the EU.
Operator is now rolling out to Pro users in Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UK, and most places ChatGPT is available.
Still working on making Operator available in the EU, Switzerland, Norway, Liechtenstein & Iceland—we’ll keep you updated!
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) February 21, 2025
OpenAI launched Operator earlier in January in the U.S., an AI agent that can perform actions on users’ behalf. Users can instruct it to perform tasks like making reservations at the restaurant, filing expense reports, buying items from e-commerce stores, booking tickets, etc. However, as of yet, Operator is available only for users of ChatGPT Pro, which costs $200 per month. It can be used via a dedicated web page only. However, OpenAI has mentioned that it is planning to make the AI Agent available to all clients.
OpenAI is not the only company that is dedicated to building AI agents that can perform tasks like these. Google, Rabbit, and Anthropic are also in the same race. However, Google’s project has not rolled out yet, while Anthropic provides access to an agent interface via an API. On the other hand, Rabbit’s model is only available for device owners.
OpenAI announced Operator after ChatGPT crossed 400 million active users
The announcement regarding Operator came right after ChatGPT crossed the milestone of 400 million weekly active users. OpenAI’s chief operating officer Brad Lightcap announced this in an X post a day ago, in which he stated, “ChatGPT recently crossed 400M WAU. We feel very fortunate to serve 5% of the world every week.”
chatgpt recently crossed 400M WAU, we feel very fortunate to serve 5% of the world every week
2M+ business users now use chatgpt at work, and reasoning model API use is up 5x since o3 mini launch
we'll bring GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 to chat and the API soon, with unlimited GPT-5 for… https://t.co/7hfyUcIyBW
— Brad Lightcap (@bradlightcap) February 20, 2025
He also pointed out that OpenAI’s reasoning API usage increased by five times since it launched the o3 mini model, which has better structured problem-solving capabilities with logical inference. In the same post, Lightcap also revealed that GPT-4.5 and GPT-5 are going to be launched soon. Although, OpenAI still hasn’t given an exact date for these models.
However, the OpenAI team has been teasing the release for a week already. On 12th February, Sam Altman posted an updated roadmap for GPT-4.5 and GPT-5. He mentioned the models will be released over the next weeks/months, and no tentative release date was given. Nevertheless, the adoption of OpenAI among big enterprises is clearly increasing, not only as a chatbot but also as a business tool. For instance, companies like T-Mobile, Uber, and Morgan Stanley have integrated their models into their businesses.
What’s next for OpenAI?
A recent report by The Information earlier today revealed that OpenAI is forecasting a shift in its reliance on companies for its computing power. Currently, OpenAI heavily relies on Microsoft. However, by 2030, OpenAI aims to get 3/4 of its data center capacity from Stargate.
Stargate has been financed heavily by SoftBank, which also happens to be OpenAI’s financial backer. On the other hand, Microsoft remains a major shareholder of OpenAI, yet the AI firm is planning a shift.
However, reports say that it won’t be an overnight shift. The company is still planning to spend more on data centers owned by Microsoft in the coming years. The AI firm expects to burn up to $20 billion in 2027, which is far more than its costs of $5 billion in 2024. According to OpenAI, its cost of inference (running AI models) will significantly be larger than the training costs of these AI models.
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