Using ChatGPT for business. Credit: DC Studio, Shutterstock.
It seems everyone’s jumping on the AI bandwagon – and OpenAI has just proved it. The company behind ChatGPT has announced that more than one million businesses are now paying customers, making it the fastest-growing business platform in history.
From Cisco and Morgan Stanley to Booking.com, Lowe’s, and Target, global firms are putting AI to work in everything from customer support to software engineering. And with adoption rates like this, the question really is: who isn’t using ChatGPT these days?
OpenAI says the momentum has been driven by everyday users who were already familiar with ChatGPT. With over 800 million people using the tool each week, companies find it far easier to roll out AI internally.
Smarter tools and faster workflows
To help companies move from experiments to real results, OpenAI has launched a wave of business-ready features, including:
- Company Knowledge – lets ChatGPT securely access internal tools like Slack, SharePoint, and Google Drive to give better answers.
- Codex for developers – firms like Cisco are cutting code review times by 50 per cent.
- AgentKit – makes building custom AI agents practical. The Carlyle Group says it’s halved development time and boosted accuracy by 30 per cent.
- Multimodal models – from Sora 2 for video creation to Realtime API for live voice agents, helping teams work seamlessly across text, images, and sound.
Businesses report big returns on AI
A recent Wharton study found that three in four enterprises are already seeing a positive return on AI investments, while fewer than five per cent report losses.
Real-world examples include:
- Indeed, which saw a 20 per cent rise in job applications using OpenAI’s tech.
- Lowe’s, where a ChatGPT-powered in-store app now helps 1,700 shops deliver expert advice.
- Intercom, which cut product development cycles from months to days.
- Databricks, integrating OpenAI’s models directly into its enterprise data systems.
Building the next generation of business apps
OpenAI says the next step is all about building with AI, not just using it. Companies such as Canva, Figma, and Spotify have integrated directly into ChatGPT, while Shopify and Etsy are experimenting with conversational shopping via the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP).
In OpenAI’s words, there’s a huge opportunity to “rethink the operating system for work” – and the world’s biggest brands seem keen to help write it.
For locals and expats running businesses in Spain, Europe or beyond, this milestone shows how quickly AI is becoming part of everyday operations. From automating admin tasks to managing customer queries, tools like ChatGPT are rapidly becoming as standard as email.
It’s less about whether to use AI and more about how quickly you can put it to work.
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