Probably 10x usage.

Think about it this way: when OpenAI was founded, it was a public benefit corporation. It had to take into account the "public good" - which is nebulous, but whatever - and capped returns for shareholders at 100x initial investment. It has since been converted into a for-profit corporation and I recall reading that the earnings cap has been done away with, but that should give you at least some idea of the stakes.

According to these guys [0], there has been a total of $180 billion invested in OpenAI since its founding. Assuming there's not been a change in what the shares were sold for to each round - which is a fairly large assumption, I know - for them to reach the 100x threshold that was apparently too low to be followed, the company would have to reach a valuation of $18 trillion dollars.

For what it's worth, the year-on-year GDP of the world's largest economy, the United States, was $32.56 trillion in Q2 2026. [1]

You don't reach a little over half of the economic output of the US in valuation by cutting costs.

[0] https://tracxn.com/d/companies/openai/__kElhSG7uVGeFk1i71Co9...

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP/