OpenAI starting to sell ChatGPT at discount, negatively impacting Microsoft: report

OpenAI is selling the enterprise version of its generative artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT at a discount, negatively impacting Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), The Information reported.

The discount is offered when customers have agreed to spend money on additional products, the news outlet added, citing an OpenAI spokesperson and two executives at large firms.

The price cuts can range between 10% and 20%, and depend upon if a customer signs a multi-year agreement and buys other OpenAI services, such as its application programming interface, Deep Research agent or its Codex coding agent.

Deep Research was launched in February, while a preview of Codex was launched last month.

OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, has told investors that it expects to generate roughly $15B from ChatGPT business customers by 2030, the news outlet added. The company told investors earlier this year that it generated $100M in revenue from ChatGPT Enterprise.

In February, OpenAI disclosed that it had surpassed 3M paying business subscribers, which includes ChatGPT Enterprise, ChatGPT Team and ChatGPT Edu customers.

The move to sell ChatGPT at a discount has negatively impacted Microsoft salespeople, given it sells competing apps (namely its Copilot app) and models. The relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI has become rockier in recent memory, partly due to the recent acquisition of Windsurf by OpenAI. OpenAI executives have also discussed whether to accuse Microsoft of anticompetitive behavior.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha.