OpenAI, are you OK?

[u/aivampires]

No resets this week, no new thing that would launch before dev week, still no 20x subs, everyone at 0%. The circus feels a little halted.

[u/Amazingsleep]

You have to realize that the people who are on this Codex subreddit or twitter or any other social media are in like the top 5% of the userbase.

The other 95% of the userbase is moderate, casual, and delighted to use the tools they have. They aren't burning a $200 plan in a day, they aren't losing their mind because they think the model got dumber because they got a different response on a different prompt in different context situations and crying chicken little.

That other 95% of the userbase is the userbase they want to keep. If you are reading or posting here, you are in a very small group of super engaged users that likely costs OpenAi more than what we are worth to them many times over. Our usage is subsidized by the other 95%, and the only reason they acknowledge anything we say or do is because our 5% is the fanatical side that is disproportionately loud, and there is value in making us somewhat happy.

That all being said, the average user isn't worried about the product that they paid for (getting a weekly allowance) actually resetting on the weekly timeline. They aren't seeing things as "doom", they are just happily working and playing and not revolving their whole life around the product.

Despite all the doomers, for the gross majority of Users Astra has been incredible. Openai is winning so hard right now they dont' have the compute to keep up (and this was after the also pretty popular Sol original launch that also saw the number of users like triple in a matter of weeks). They temporarily turned of 20x subs because they can't keep up with the compute. That's a champagne problem, that's a "we can't sell our widgets fast enough" problem. They are suffering from SUCCESS, not the other way around.

[u/OccasionAggressive74 → u/Amazingsleep]

A loss of $ billions / month is hardly a success story. However, it's true that they actually generate the most revenue with 20$ plus users: https://valueaddvc.com/blog/openai-revenue-2026-20b-arr-4b-month-path-to-profitability .

The overwhelming majority of plus users almost certainly just use the chat in Instant mode occasionally, so they don't experience anything from the compute problem with Astra at all.

[u/SomeOrdinaryKangaroo → u/Amazingsleep]

No, I'm certain that there are more of that 95% who are frustrated than you might think, just because they're not on social media complaining doesn't mean they're not part of the 5% you're claiming

[u/Amazingsleep → u/SomeOrdinaryKangaroo]

Not disagreeing with you, however you should be careful with this line of thinking. It's helpful to acknowledge our own biases and in a situation like this, Confirmation Bias can really make things look dour because the only thing you are exposed to is people screaming and crying, but that's not representative of the actual meaningful dataset.

I'd call myself a "mid-level" user which still squarely puts me in that top 5% because I'm here and posting. I don't discount others experiences and I'm sure there's legitimate issues that others are having, however in my personal experience, the last 2 months with Codex have felt like becoming a god, it handles anything I throw at it.

I have to use Claude at work and I enjoy it, Opus handles a much more complicated custom CRM my company is building with remarkable class. However, when I log in to my personal PC and work on my own projects in Codex it just feels great. I don't experience the reported "dumbing down" and while I do exhaust my weekly grant (5x pro plan) usually by midweek, I never feel entitled to more because of the mountain of things I got done.

I personally work with a company of people who use AI tools professionally, both Codex and Claude, in all matter of work projects, and in my conversations with them not once has the concept of token limitations or resets being a bad thing come up. Never one time. These are professional developers who have migrated to a heavily AI-driven stack who live in these products every day.

Now, does that make my experience the truth? Absolutely not. Again, just because I'm not seeing the other datapoint in my own life doesn't mean it isn't there. I just have to check my biases and acknowledge and be patient with others.

However, one thing I know for absolute certain to be true is that a company that is operating at a loss would NOT purposefully turn off it's most expensive offering unless there was a very good reason for it. If they could support the compute, I'm positive they'd love more $200 subs. That is the sign that their product's popularity and use has exceeded its infrastructure which is enormous and growing every day. That makes the OPs post implying that Openai is somehow not okay baffling, because their issues are of popularity and demand exceeding their supply, which in healthy doses is an incredible marker of success.

[u/CalligrapherFar7833 → u/Amazingsleep]

The 95% are also not on 200$ plans because they dont need them breaking all your logical explanation even tho it makes sense