alt Hacker NewsOpenAI has close to 1 billion users which are mostly free users and will switch provider the moment OpenAI start charging them or adding ads. Which they will, as OpenAI themselves said they are losing money even with 200$ subs. So that amount of users is pretty meaningless.
Google search is free to use too. So is Instagram. Facebook. Whatsapp. All of these have ads.
OpenAI says they're very profitable on inference.