I'd say the userbase has grown. You can't claim half a billion users and simultaneously say you're still trying to grow. This isn't a month-old technology now. And they still can't turn a profit. (edit: and by "you" i meant "they")

>You can't claim half a billion users and simultaneously say you're still trying to grow.

You can if you're still growing. ChatGPT is the 5th most visited site on the planet yes, but it is still growing hundreds of millions of visits with every passing month.

They aren't turning a profit because they aren't monetizing the vast majority of subscribers in any way (not even ads). LLM inference is cheap enough for ads to be viable.