OpenAI has put ChatGPT Plus sign-ups on pause

OpenAI is pausing new user subscriptions for ChatGPT Plus. The news comes after the company announced a suite of new features for paying subscribers during its first-ever developer conference last week, including new functionality that allows Plus users to build their own chatbots.

The surge in usage, following the company’s developer day, has exceeded capacity, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on X on Nov. 14.

During the conference, Altman said that ChatGPT has reached 100 million weekly active users, adding that more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies use ChatGPT, up from 82% in August.

Not only has ChatGPT attracted more sign-ups but also more cyberattacks. Days after the developer conference, ChatGPT experienced outages and abnormally high traffic, raising questions about the chatbot’s security.

The surge in demand is not just hitting ChatGPT Plus—users are also on waitlists for its enterprise-level subscription. Irreverent Labs, a startup developing text-to-video technology, told Quartz earlier this month that it has been waiting several months for ChatGPT Enterprise, which offers added privacy and security features.

ChatGPT Plus costs $20 a month. With this subscription plan, users get access to GPT-4, which has higher accuracy than the predecessor models, as well as faster responses, plus image and voice features.