October 17, 2025 • 7 mins
In this week’s Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through data from Deutsche Bank that shows ChatGPT’s growth is flatlining in Europe, and how advertising isn’t going to save OpenAI.
OpenAI’s ‘flatlining’ subs in Europe: The AI boom’s poster child may be struggling to recruit new subscribers, Deutsche Bank warns
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/openai-flatlining-subs-europe-ai-145343677.html
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Alzo Media. Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline Monologue.
I'm your host ed ZiT Tron and sorry that there
hasn't been a monologue for a few weeks. These massive
episodes have been putting together, took up my time in
(00:23):
a way that made them a little impractical, and as
far as the show goes, I know it's been very
AI focused. I can't even say AI right sometimes. But anyway,
this is likely going to continue for a while because,
as you can tell from the news, crazy shit keeps
happening every day. Every day Sam Altman tells somebody he's
going to give them a billion dollars. It's all so silly,
(00:43):
and I do feel like it's not being covered very thoroughly,
so I'm doing my best to do so. Nevertheless, I
promise I'm going to find a way to bring in
more non AI stuff. I'm not really sure how it's
going to make it in there. I'll do my best,
and I'm already working on CES twenty twenty six, which
I think is going to be probably the best tech
podcasting thing ever. Got some incredible guests Chloe Radcliffe of course,
(01:05):
Edward Anguiso Junior, David Roth, and yeah, those guests I
can't quite talk about yet, but they're gonna make you
really happy, and it's gonna be about more than just AI.
That being said, next week's episode is likely to be
AI focused, as I've had a lot of people request
they do an episode that's a simplified guide to the
AI bubble, something that they can share with people that
aren't sticking their head and the technological or financial septic
(01:26):
tank every day. And look, I think you're gonna love it.
You can please listen to it anyway. I need the downloads,
but in all seriousness, I think it's gonna be something,
and I've been working on it for a few days now.
That's quite short and sharp, but we'll speak to people
who are not technical or financial at all. I think
it'll be great and if not shows free you'll enjoy it.
(01:46):
But I also do just want to say I really
appreciate how many of you listen every week. I really
appreciate your patience with the AI stuff. You seem to
all really enjoy it. But I do love to hear
from you whenever I can, so reach out now. Please
don't be too mean, though I do have a heart,
But yes, this Week's monologue is somewhat of a big story.
(02:06):
So two days ago Fortune published a story saying that,
according to dates from Deutsche Bank, which is a very
very large bank, that OpenAI subscription growth in Europe has
stalled and is and I quote flatlining in the major
European markets over the past four months. To quote Fortune,
the data was drawn from transactions processed by third party
financial institutions. Really nailed that word in the UK, Germany, France,
(02:29):
Italy and Spain, representing fifteen percent of Chat GPT users.
And if you're wondering, the top software markets in the
world are US, China, Germany, UK, France, and Italy, and
then there's Canada and some others. To be clear, this
specifically refers to people paying for Chat GPT subscriptions the
twenty buck a month one most likely, and in a
graph I'll link to in the show notes, you really
should look at it. Open Ai subscription growth in Europe
(02:52):
has been pretty rocky from the beginning, dropping from ten
percent in June twenty twenty three to below zero percent
in August twenty twenty three, meaning growth to decline only
to recover slightly well pretty well, I guess the twenty
percent in December twenty twenty three, then drop again to
blow zero percent in February twenty twenty four. Otherwise, open
Ai barely scraped ten percent growth outside of some spikes
in September twenty twenty four around the launch of their
(03:14):
Reasoning models which got them to about fifteen percent, the
launch of their Useless Agent operator in January twenty twenty five,
which got them somehow to around eighty eighteen percent, and
then the launch of four Image Generation in March twenty
twenty five, which by the way was the studio Ghibliwank,
and that got them back to twenty ten percent, though
I realized that was a lot of numbers, and like
(03:34):
I said, the chart is in the episode Notes I swear.
But in June twenty twenty five, open Ai faced negative
growth of subscribers in Europe, barely recovering to two to
three percent in July twenty twenty five, and then back
to zero percent in August twenty twenty five, which looks
like they're maybe a mild recovery, coming to around three
percent in September. Now, while I'm not quite declaring victory
(03:56):
or blasting not like us, I am having trouble finding
a way around how bad. I can find no example
of a successful software revolution that started with high growth
and tumbled into the abyss in Europe. It didn't happen
with Facebook, and it certainly didn't happen in Uber's case,
even though European governments actively tried to reject it, and
some of them still are. It didn't happen with the smartphone,
(04:16):
or cloud computing, or really any other software revolution or device.
They would start from kind of nowhere and then grow,
and then there'd be wobbles, but they'd keep growing steadily.
This is a steady decline. And to be clear, this
has nothing to do with Europe's General Data Protection regulations
of the GDPR. Robert Evans once told me to spell
everything out. I've independently confirmed with the European chet GPT
(04:37):
users that the product is basically identical over there. Europe
just happens to be rejecting chet GPT. They don't want
to pay for it. And as you'll see when you
look at the graph, the boosts that open Ai gets
from throwing out new products, they're becoming less pronounced each time.
Other than operator that one kind of surprised me but
even then eighteen percent growth, and I think it's month
(04:58):
over month. If it's year over year, they wouldn't be
a year of year, it's month over month. Now. The GDPR,
by the way, will make it difficult for open ai
to launch advertising, which I will add will not be
the saving grace for this company, because Google and Meta's
massive advertising revenues come from decades of data and expertise
in forcing them down customers throats, as well as having
a very compelling product and thousands of salespeople and also,
(05:19):
in Google's case, thousands of miles of underground cable and
under the c cable. I believe as well people that
are easily scared of suggesting the open AI's data on
users is rich because they feed so much into it.
This point makes the assumption that this data is useful
and that open ai can actually do anything with it,
despite having absolutely no expertise in selling ads. As a
reminder perplexity that an AI search engine, you'd think would
(05:41):
be the perfect place for ads, they made twenty grand,
twenty thousand dollars selling ads in twenty twenty four. That's bollocks.
It's terrible. You make more selling dogs. They will watch
the day to day might be auctioning dogs. Anyway, my
rambling aside, it's very easy to get scared of this
company and just think, oh, they have a lot of
money in you. Even though they lose billions, they'll just
(06:02):
put ads in and that'll fix everything. I must caution
you to immediately be a doomer there. I see no
real evidence that they're going to find another business line
in mostly evidence by the fact they've never been able
to find one. And while this isn't declarative proof that
this company is circling the drain, I don't know how
else to look at it as anything other than their
growth story in Europe is dying and they're building a
(06:24):
goddamn data center in England. I think with n Scale,
the company that's never built an AI data center in
their life. To be fair, that's also the case with Crusoe.
In fact, all of Openay's partners pretty much never built
a data center of any kind other than crypto ones,
which are completely different. Also, no one's built a gig
what data center. Ah, that's going to be a future episode.
Forgive me. I want to educate you on data centers
(06:45):
one day, but every time I start thinking about them.
My brain starts playing that music from kill Bill when
she looks anyone she's mad at. Someone's going to email
me and say, Perry Mason Christ. The great thing about
these monologues is I could just talk about whatever I
want to. They say I should do this, which is
what I'm gonna do. But in reality, back to the
thing we're talking about, it really is hard to read
(07:07):
this as anything other than air escaping the bubble. It's
been pissed, I swear to God, and perhaps it's the
error of smiles beginning. A specter is haunting Silicon Valley,
the face of the smiling man, and I hope you'll
join me every week to find out how this shit
bursts or I don't know, whatever crazy crap Sam Mortman
promises next
Alzo Media. Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline Monologue.
I'm your host ed ZiT Tron and sorry that there
hasn't been a monologue for a few weeks. These massive
episodes have been putting together, took up my time in
(00:23):
a way that made them a little impractical, and as
far as the show goes, I know it's been very
AI focused. I can't even say AI right sometimes. But anyway,
this is likely going to continue for a while because,
as you can tell from the news, crazy shit keeps
happening every day. Every day Sam Altman tells somebody he's
going to give them a billion dollars. It's all so silly,
(00:43):
and I do feel like it's not being covered very thoroughly,
so I'm doing my best to do so. Nevertheless, I
promise I'm going to find a way to bring in
more non AI stuff. I'm not really sure how it's
going to make it in there. I'll do my best,
and I'm already working on CES twenty twenty six, which
I think is going to be probably the best tech
podcasting thing ever. Got some incredible guests Chloe Radcliffe of course,
(01:05):
Edward Anguiso Junior, David Roth, and yeah, those guests I
can't quite talk about yet, but they're gonna make you
really happy, and it's gonna be about more than just AI.
That being said, next week's episode is likely to be
AI focused, as I've had a lot of people request
they do an episode that's a simplified guide to the
AI bubble, something that they can share with people that
aren't sticking their head and the technological or financial septic
(01:26):
tank every day. And look, I think you're gonna love it.
You can please listen to it anyway. I need the downloads,
but in all seriousness, I think it's gonna be something,
and I've been working on it for a few days now.
That's quite short and sharp, but we'll speak to people
who are not technical or financial at all. I think
it'll be great and if not shows free you'll enjoy it.
(01:46):
But I also do just want to say I really
appreciate how many of you listen every week. I really
appreciate your patience with the AI stuff. You seem to
all really enjoy it. But I do love to hear
from you whenever I can, so reach out now. Please
don't be too mean, though I do have a heart,
But yes, this Week's monologue is somewhat of a big story.
(02:06):
So two days ago Fortune published a story saying that,
according to dates from Deutsche Bank, which is a very
very large bank, that OpenAI subscription growth in Europe has
stalled and is and I quote flatlining in the major
European markets over the past four months. To quote Fortune,
the data was drawn from transactions processed by third party
financial institutions. Really nailed that word in the UK, Germany, France,
(02:29):
Italy and Spain, representing fifteen percent of Chat GPT users.
And if you're wondering, the top software markets in the
world are US, China, Germany, UK, France, and Italy, and
then there's Canada and some others. To be clear, this
specifically refers to people paying for Chat GPT subscriptions the
twenty buck a month one most likely, and in a
graph I'll link to in the show notes, you really
should look at it. Open Ai subscription growth in Europe
(02:52):
has been pretty rocky from the beginning, dropping from ten
percent in June twenty twenty three to below zero percent
in August twenty twenty three, meaning growth to decline only
to recover slightly well pretty well, I guess the twenty
percent in December twenty twenty three, then drop again to
blow zero percent in February twenty twenty four. Otherwise, open
Ai barely scraped ten percent growth outside of some spikes
in September twenty twenty four around the launch of their
(03:14):
Reasoning models which got them to about fifteen percent, the
launch of their Useless Agent operator in January twenty twenty five,
which got them somehow to around eighty eighteen percent, and
then the launch of four Image Generation in March twenty
twenty five, which by the way was the studio Ghibliwank,
and that got them back to twenty ten percent, though
I realized that was a lot of numbers, and like
(03:34):
I said, the chart is in the episode Notes I swear.
But in June twenty twenty five, open Ai faced negative
growth of subscribers in Europe, barely recovering to two to
three percent in July twenty twenty five, and then back
to zero percent in August twenty twenty five, which looks
like they're maybe a mild recovery, coming to around three
percent in September. Now, while I'm not quite declaring victory
(03:56):
or blasting not like us, I am having trouble finding
a way around how bad. I can find no example
of a successful software revolution that started with high growth
and tumbled into the abyss in Europe. It didn't happen
with Facebook, and it certainly didn't happen in Uber's case,
even though European governments actively tried to reject it, and
some of them still are. It didn't happen with the smartphone,
(04:16):
or cloud computing, or really any other software revolution or device.
They would start from kind of nowhere and then grow,
and then there'd be wobbles, but they'd keep growing steadily.
This is a steady decline. And to be clear, this
has nothing to do with Europe's General Data Protection regulations
of the GDPR. Robert Evans once told me to spell
everything out. I've independently confirmed with the European chet GPT
(04:37):
users that the product is basically identical over there. Europe
just happens to be rejecting chet GPT. They don't want
to pay for it. And as you'll see when you
look at the graph, the boosts that open Ai gets
from throwing out new products, they're becoming less pronounced each time.
Other than operator that one kind of surprised me but
even then eighteen percent growth, and I think it's month
(04:58):
over month. If it's year over year, they wouldn't be
a year of year, it's month over month. Now. The GDPR,
by the way, will make it difficult for open ai
to launch advertising, which I will add will not be
the saving grace for this company, because Google and Meta's
massive advertising revenues come from decades of data and expertise
in forcing them down customers throats, as well as having
a very compelling product and thousands of salespeople and also,
(05:19):
in Google's case, thousands of miles of underground cable and
under the c cable. I believe as well people that
are easily scared of suggesting the open AI's data on
users is rich because they feed so much into it.
This point makes the assumption that this data is useful
and that open ai can actually do anything with it,
despite having absolutely no expertise in selling ads. As a
reminder perplexity that an AI search engine, you'd think would
(05:41):
be the perfect place for ads, they made twenty grand,
twenty thousand dollars selling ads in twenty twenty four. That's bollocks.
It's terrible. You make more selling dogs. They will watch
the day to day might be auctioning dogs. Anyway, my
rambling aside, it's very easy to get scared of this
company and just think, oh, they have a lot of
money in you. Even though they lose billions, they'll just
(06:02):
put ads in and that'll fix everything. I must caution
you to immediately be a doomer there. I see no
real evidence that they're going to find another business line
in mostly evidence by the fact they've never been able
to find one. And while this isn't declarative proof that
this company is circling the drain, I don't know how
else to look at it as anything other than their
growth story in Europe is dying and they're building a
(06:24):
goddamn data center in England. I think with n Scale,
the company that's never built an AI data center in
their life. To be fair, that's also the case with Crusoe.
In fact, all of Openay's partners pretty much never built
a data center of any kind other than crypto ones,
which are completely different. Also, no one's built a gig
what data center. Ah, that's going to be a future episode.
Forgive me. I want to educate you on data centers
(06:45):
one day, but every time I start thinking about them.
My brain starts playing that music from kill Bill when
she looks anyone she's mad at. Someone's going to email
me and say, Perry Mason Christ. The great thing about
these monologues is I could just talk about whatever I
want to. They say I should do this, which is
what I'm gonna do. But in reality, back to the
thing we're talking about, it really is hard to read
(07:07):
this as anything other than air escaping the bubble. It's
been pissed, I swear to God, and perhaps it's the
error of smiles beginning. A specter is haunting Silicon Valley,
the face of the smiling man, and I hope you'll
join me every week to find out how this shit
bursts or I don't know, whatever crazy crap Sam Mortman
promises next
Host
Ed Zitron
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