OpenAI Pricing Shift: From $20 to $2,000 for ‘Orion’ Models?
Strategic Alert
- 💸 Rumor: Internal talks of a $2,000/month subscription model.
- 📈 Shift: Moving from “Growth at all costs” to “Enterprise Viability.”
- 🧠 New Usage: “Reasoning” models (o1/Strawberry) cost 30-100x more to run.
For years, the $20/month ChatGPT Plus subscription has been the “Golden Ticket” of AI. But as OpenAI moves closer to AGI with models like Strawberry (o1) and Orion, the era of cheap, unlimited intelligence is ending.
According to reports from The Information and internal leaks, OpenAI is actively restructuring its pricing strategy. The goal? To monetize the massive compute costs of “Reasoning Models” that don’t just predict the next token—they think.
The $2,000/Month Rumor: What Is It?
While shocking to the average consumer, a $2,000/month price point isn’t for you. It’s for Enterprise Power Users. Currently, models like GPT-4o are heavily subsidized.
The new pricing tier is expected to grant access to:
- Reasoning-Heavy Models (o1-Pro): Models that spend minutes “thinking” before answering.
- Unlimited Context Windows: Ingesting entire codebases or legal libraries in one go.
- Data Privacy Guarantees: Zero-retention policies required by banks and hospitals.
The New Simulated Pricing Structure
Based on leaks and API trends, here is the projected evolution of OpenAI’s pricing:
| Plan | Price | Target Audience | Key Models |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Free | $0 | General Public | GPT-4o Mini |
| ChatGPT Plus | $20/mo | Prosumers | GPT-4o, o1-preview (Limited) |
| ChatGPT Pro (New) | $200/mo | Developers/Researchers | o1-Pro (High Rate Limits) |
| Enterprise Elite | ~$2,000/mo | Fortune 500 R&D | Orion (Full Access), Custom Fine-Tuning |
The “Token Economics” of Reasoning
Why such a jump? It comes down to Inference Compute.
Traditional models (GPT-3/4) are linear: You input 100 tokens, it processes them once. Reasoning Models (o1) use “Chain of Thought.” They generate thousands of invisible internal tokens to verify their own logic before showing you the answer.
The Math:
- Standard Query: $0.003 compute cost.
- Reasoning Query: $0.30 compute cost (100x increase).
OpenAI can no longer afford to give this away for $20.
Strategy for Businesses
If your workflow relies on AI, you need to prepare for a “Bifurcated Market.”
- Commodity Tasks (Email, Summaries): Prices will race to zero (see GPT-4o Mini).
- Cognitive Tasks (Coding, Strategy): Prices will skyrocket.
The smart move? Optimize your prompts now. Don’t use a $2,000/month model to write a birthday email. Use “Model Routing” to send simple tasks to cheap models and complex tasks to the expensive ones.
Check Current API Pricing View Enterprise Plans
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