How to understand GPT-5? The commercial value is greater than the technical value, and OpenAI is about to become "the world's most valuable private company."

OpenAI is showcasing strong commercial momentum with the release of GPT-5, and the company's valuation is expected to reach $500 billion, making it "the most valuable private company in the world."

On August 13, according to news from the Chasing Wind Trading Desk, JP Morgan stated in its latest research report that OpenAI is transitioning from technological breakthroughs to commercialization, and the release of GPT-5 reflects more of a commercial strategic intent rather than a technological revolution.

The bank noted that while the technical improvements of GPT-5 are relatively limited (only about a 10% average increase compared to the o3 model), its commercial strategy is significant, including simplifying the product line, opening access to all users, aggressive pricing strategies, and enhancing programming capabilities. This may suggest that the AI industry is shifting from a technological competition to a market share battle.

JP Morgan stated that key data shows that the company's annual recurring revenue (ARR) has surpassed $13 billion, with active users reaching 700 million weekly active users, and its valuation is expected to soar from $300 billion to $500 billion, making it "the most valuable private company in the world," with a 66% increase reflecting the market's recognition of its commercialization capabilities.

GPT-5 Release: Commercial Drive Surpasses Technological Breakthrough

The report stated that GPT-5 was released on August 7, with over 150,000 people watching the live stream, but the technical performance was relatively mild. It ranked first on the LM Arena leaderboard, but technical benchmark tests showed only about a 10% average performance improvement compared to the o3 model, far below investor and user expectations.

Although OpenAI described it as "an important step on the path to AGI," and the model ranked first in several technical benchmark tests, including MMMU (visual reasoning), AIME 2025 (mathematics), GPQA Diamond (science), and Aider Polyglot (code editing), the average performance improvement compared to OpenAI's o3 model was only about 10%.

More importantly, OpenAI has adopted several key commercial strategies:

Simplifying the product line: The company has abandoned previous GPT models in favor of a unified system equipped with real-time routers that can quickly decide whether to use an efficient model or a deep reasoning model (referred to as GPT-5 Thinking) based on query type, complexity, and user intent.

Full user coverage: GPT-5 will be launched for all ChatGPT users, including free users. This is the first time OpenAI has opened its state-of-the-art model to its entire user base. CEO Sam Altman revealed that after the release, the proportion of free users using the reasoning model daily increased from less than 1% to 7%.

Aggressive programming layout: In response to a Menlo Ventures survey showing that OpenAI's developer market share is about 20% (less than half of its competitor Anthropic), OpenAI is focusing on the programming field Cursor CEO publicly stated that GPT-5 is "the most intelligent model they have ever used," and will become the default choice for new users on a platform with over 1 million active users.

Competitive Pricing: The pricing for GPT-5 is on par with Google Gemini 2.5, with input tokens priced at $1.25 per million and output tokens at $10 per million. The Mini and Nano options offer slightly more discounts compared to Google's 2.5 Flash series.

Open Source Model Release: OpenAI has released two open-weight language models "gpt-oss-120b" and "gpt-oss-20b" for the first time since 2019. The performance of the larger model is comparable to o4-mini, but it ranks 36th overall in the LM Arena (o4-mini ranks 16th).

Notably, these open-weight models will be available on Amazon Bedrock, marking OpenAI's first foray into this area. The output tokens are 9 times cheaper than DeepSeek R1 and 25 times cheaper than Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.

This release aligns with the U.S. AI Action Plan, which calls for more open weights and open-source models to ensure "the U.S. has leading open models built on American values."

Valuation Soars to $500 Billion: Becoming the Most Valuable Private Company

OpenAI's key business metrics show strong growth:

Revenue Growth: ARR surpassed $13 billion in early August, a 30% increase from June.

User Growth: Weekly active users are expected to reach 700 million, a 40% increase from 500 million in March.

Enterprise Users: Paid enterprise users reached 5 million, a 66% increase from June.

Market Dominance: It accounts for about 70% of AI chatbot downloads and approximately 75% of traffic on AI model websites in July.

OpenAI's Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap pointed out that customers are "shifting from pilot and proof of concept to full deployment," and since the introduction of flexible credit-based pricing, customer deployment scale has increased fivefold.

According to media reports, OpenAI is planning a secondary market transaction worth billions of dollars, with the company's valuation reaching $500 billion, significantly up from the $300 billion valuation in March, making OpenAI the most valuable private company in the world.