> 5 days ago: 7M users

> 4 days ago: 8M users

> 3 days ago: 9M users

That's some incredible growth.

tbf they turned previous ChatGPT macOS app into Codex, so getting a "new" Codex user might mean someone using ChatGPT just updated their app.

I don’t even know what Codex is anymore and at this point I’m too afraid to ask. I remember the days when it was a VSCode extension.

Didn’t they also name their new hardware product Codex?

Yes, they’re following the Microsoft strategy of “if you name everything Copilot, you can report high Copilot usage”

To me, it's the cli.

Numbers are for Codex AND ChatGPT Work users. So if a ChatGPT subscriber tries Work tab they must be counted as a new active user. So it’s not like 1M new developers daily.

I have an inkling of a feeling that this generosity is a stunt only to help juice the growth and “story” specifically for the IPO…

Best use the AI subsidies while you can!

Which seems a bit off to me. Can they even ipo right now due to the apple business?

Although I don't think you're wrong. The number of "organic" social media posts I've seen in the past few weeks of the form: 'Wow, Anthropic users are ugly losers...nothing like those handsome openai tiger blood winner sages' is simply too high in my mind for anything other than an ipo prelude.

[Also are altman and musk really fighting on x? Like, that's got to be a sign of some sort of internal stressors right?]

I was thinking about this. How do they measure this? Every upgrade of the ChatGPT apps get counted?

They just merged the ChatGPT app and the Codex app into one super app.

It is a clever growth hack.

I would expect them to grow faster than 1 million users a day in that case, since chatGPT has almost a billion users. Maybe everyone's just using the web app or mobile?

I was using the web app. Don't see any reason to use anything else for basic chat. Not having access to my computer is a feature

As someone who just used computer use to successfully perform a "change of address" across 52 different services, hard disagree. It's magic.

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They, like every startup ever, count users in a very stupid way.

One person using the app on two computers and a phone? That's obviously 3 users.

Growth Hackers and SEO types have done so much to make the world an insufferable place. I congradulate them on the OpenClaw psyop, that was some very inspired bullshit that did fuck all and is now irrelevant.

Such a counting method doesn’t explain that incredible growth. Do you think day by day huge portions of users are using additional devices in perpetuity?

I know it for a fact. Have you never worked at a startup before or even seen "growth hacking" at work?

Turning <100k claude refugees into seven figures by counting their web sessions, their codex sessions, and the mobile app as separate "users" is pratically the only way you can get such numbers.

Then you do it again by offering ex-users like me who have already given them a grand or two a free month of plus or pro (this is the third time they have done so for me)

When you hear founders and investors talk about "the magic of storytelling" "the power of momentum", this is what that is.