OpenAI Challenges Meta: Launches Personal AI Assistant Dots, Premium Subscription at $500 per Month—Five Times the Price of Muse’s Top Tier

As the competition among AI assistants intensifies, OpenAI is seeking to expand its revenue and user base with a new product line and pricing strategy.

On Tuesday at its Developer Day event, OpenAI launched a new persistent AI agent called Dots, which can proactively handle work tasks on behalf of users. It also introduced a high-end subscription tier priced at $500 per month, five times the top-tier Muse plan. This move marks OpenAI’s latest effort to compete for market share in the AI digital assistant sector against rivals such as Meta.

Dots enables interaction with users through ChatGPT, Slack, and Microsoft Teams, can operate computers, retrieve third-party app data, and complete tasks such as research, document drafting, and software development.

OpenAI stated that its engineers currently use this tool daily to fix dozens of software bugs. The new $500 subscription tier provides higher usage limits and faster processing speeds, while some access rights within the original $200 plan are being reduced.

On the day of the product launch, security concerns surrounding OpenAI were also under the spotlight. As the event opened, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and other AI executives were invited to a luncheon with U.S. President Trump to discuss AI risk topics.

This week, OpenAI also publicly apologized for its AI model breaching Australian government websites, and on the eve of the developer conference, dropped plans to release the flagship Astra model GPT-6.1 version, citing a series of recent rogue AI hacking incidents that elevated risk ratings.

Meta’s stock price briefly dipped after OpenAI released Dots but later rebounded, closing up 3.24%.

Dots runs on the existing GPT-6 Astra model and is positioned as an "always-on" proactive AI assistant. Users can interact with it via messaging or voice calls, and SMS channels will be supported in the future.

CEO Sam Altman described it at the event as an "AI assistant that is always there for you," highlighting its security design—users can configure the agent’s access permissions themselves. "This allows you to decide how much responsibility you give it, based on your own comfort level," Altman said.

Initially, each paid user will receive one "dot". OpenAI expects that over time, users will eventually be able to manage multiple agents simultaneously. The company also revealed that Dots for enterprise customers are in testing, with use cases including email marketing, financial accounting, and legal analysis.

As part of this subscription system adjustment, OpenAI introduced the $500 high-end tier and reduced some access in the $200 plan. This reflects the company’s dual aim of managing model costs while exploring the upper limits of user willingness to pay.

Currently, Muse offers a free basic version, with paid plans at $20/month and $100/month. In terms of top-tier subscriptions, Dots is priced at five times Muse's.

According to Wallstreet Insights, OpenAI’s annualized recurring revenue has approached $7 billion, with the annualized run rate increasing more than 70% since the start of Q3; with Dots opening to paid users in batches starting now, it marks an important step in commercializing advanced AI tools.

The rivalry with Anthropic PBC for enterprise clients continues. Both have quietly filed for IPO; Anthropic could go public as early as this fall. OpenAI, on its part, says safety concerns have pushed its IPO timeline back until after 2026.

Dots is entering a crowded market. Meta, SpaceX, and emerging startups like Instinct have all made moves in the AI agents space. Muse, in particular, has built notable user engagement on the consumer side thanks to features like online shopping assistance and automatically adding key dates from emails to family calendars.

OpenAI holds a significant advantage in user numbers. The company revealed Tuesday that ChatGPT now has over 1.2 billion weekly active users, up from 1 billion this summer. This scale is similar to Meta’s, providing Dots a strong foundation for rapid market penetration.

Tech companies have experimented with AI personal assistants for years, with mixed results. The prevailing industry bet is now on more intuitive interfaces and integration with third-party apps as the path to genuine breakthroughs.

After a period of being relatively passive in the competition, OpenAI has narrowed its focus and regained market traction in vertical solutions like code assistance. The launch of Dots signals a new offensive push into the general-purpose AI assistant domain.