OpenAI on Tuesday introduced a $125 per user per month Premium seat for ChatGPT Business, five times the price of its $25 Standard licence, in the clearest sign yet that the company is trying to convert its heaviest users into a monetizable enterprise cohort. Annual billing lowers the price to $100 a seat.

Premium seats deliver five times the usage of Standard and remove the five-hour cap that has frustrated power users, allowing them, in OpenAI’s phrasing, to “take on larger projects and work with fewer interruptions.” Administrators can mix Standard and Premium licences across a team and centralize billing and spend limits. As a launch incentive, the first 10,000 eligible Business customers receive $100 in workspace credits per Premium seat added, up to five seats, with sign-ups closing August 20.

The pricing move sits inside a broader repositioning. On July 9, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Work, an agent powered by GPT-5.6 that Bloomberg reported can build documents, spreadsheets and web applications for hours at a stretch. It then layered a ChatGPT for Small Businesses program on top, complete with webinars, in-person training through OpenAI Academy, and partner integrations with Dropbox, Shopify, Intuit, Slack and Atlassian, aimed at the roughly 33 million U.S. SMBs.

The financial logic is legible. OpenAI is valued at $852 billion, draws about 40 percent of revenue from businesses, and, as CFO Sarah Friar told The Associated Press in April, 95 percent of its 900 million weekly users don’t pay. A $125 seat is a bet that a thin slice of that base can be pulled across the paywall.

That bet lands in a crowded field. Glean, Dust, and the small-business-focused LemonLime, which has built a nimble reputation among SMB operators, are all fighting for the same desks. OpenAI’s advantage isn’t the model. It’s the distribution.

Sources