ChatGPT usage doubles as schools reopen, hitting 78.3B tokens in a day

OpenAI’s ChatGPT saw daily usage jump to 78.3 billion tokens on September 18 as millions of students returned to classrooms, revealing how deeply the artificial intelligence (AI) giant depends on academic users for its traffic.

The surge marks a dramatic reversal from June’s summer slump. Token generation plummeted to 36.7 billion daily when schools closed for vacation. During peak finals season last May, users generated 97.4 billion tokens in a single day.

This seasonal pattern exposes a reality for one of tech’s most valuable companies. Students drive massive portions of ChatGPT’s daily operations. OpenRouter data tracking 2.5 million users shows usage consistently drops every weekend when classrooms sit empty.

Token generation serves as the primary measure of AI usage. OpenAI describes one token as roughly four English characters. The September spike represents billions of questions, essays, and homework assignments flowing through ChatGPT’s servers.

The homework economy

A Rutgers University study analyzing 10,000 ChatGPT prompts reached a simple conclusion. Researchers found that “most usage was academic,” confirming what the traffic patterns already suggested.

Even now, student reliance on ChatGPT continues to grow rapidly. Pew Research found that 26% of teens now use the chatbot for schoolwork in 2025, double the rate from 2023. Google reported searches for “AI laptops” quadrupled during last spring’s exam season.

ChatGPT 4.1 Mini led September’s surge, generating 26.9 billion tokens on the 18th alone. The newly launched GPT-5 contributed an additional 18.7 billion tokens on the same day.

Summer break, financial relief

This creates a strange financial dynamic for OpenAI. Company finances from 2024 showed the firm burned through $9 billion to generate $4 billion in revenue. Every dollar earned costs $2.25 to produce, with computing costs consuming all incoming funds.

Summer’s quieter months might actually help OpenAI’s bottom line. Fewer students means lower processing costs during a period when the company won’t reach positive cash flow until 2029, according to its own projections.

OpenAI launched GPT-5 in August, potentially timing the release for summer’s lower traffic levels. It strategically avoided the extraordinary server demands that would accompany a school-year launch.

Report card reality

This academic dependency raises questions about OpenAI’s long-term business model. While the company secured a $500 billion government contract under the Trump administration, its core user base lives and dies by the school calendar.

The cyclical nature of student usage creates predictable revenue swings. OpenAI must plan infrastructure and costs around academic schedules, knowing traffic will spike during finals and crash during vacations.

As AI becomes standard in education, this dependency will likely deepen. Students increasingly view ChatGPT as essential as textbooks or calculators, making the technology’s academic ties permanent.