Rapidly scaling online storage to serve over 1 billion ChatGPT users

OpenAI developed Habitat, an online storage platform, to provide fast and reliable data access for its products, including ChatGPT. Habitat now processes over 70 million requests per second, supporting products used by more than 1 billion people weekly across nearly 40 regions. Initially launched for GPTs at DevDay 2023 as a simple Python client-side library, Habitat has evolved into a complex distributed system managing over 500 petabytes of data, enabling OpenAI to scale its services efficiently.

This report details how OpenAI scaled its storage from a simple Python library to a complex distributed system supporting over 1 billion users, unlike typical product-focused announcements.