OpenAI is launching a new ChatGPT Pro plan with its most powerful model, which the company claims "will solve increasingly complex and critical problems." This new plan will cost $200 a month, as it "takes significantly more compute to power these capabilities." It's a significant jump in price compared to its $20 a month Plus offering.

ChatGPT Pro will offer unlimited access to several of the company's models, including o1, o1-mini, GPT-4o and Advanced Voice. Although the main reason for subscribing will be the newly available pro mode, which is "a version of o1 that uses more compute to think harder and provide even better answers to the hardest problems." It's described as "research-grade intelligence" aimed at engineers and researchers.

Looking at the data released by OpenAI, it's hard to tell if this is worth such a drastic increase in price. While the new pro-mode model does perform better than the o1 model when using the company's stricter evaluations, it doesn't do 10 times better than the o1 model. OpenAI is likely banking on organizations looking to maximize productivity while not batting an eyelash at the extra cost.

The introduction of this new plan brings up a lot of questions regarding the future of OpenAI's offerings. For example, will an increase in model performance always necessitate this big of an increase in pricing? Will OpenAI be able to develop models that require less compute while still delivering performance increases to the Plus tier so that it can keep it at a reasonable price?

This announcement will be one of several the company has in the pipeline for its 12 Days of OpenAI event. Hopefully the next announcements offer something a little more compelling and provide a glimpse of the future of AI.