OpenAI, facing immense user growth with tools like ChatGPT, encountered significant Identity and Access Management (IAM) challenges. With its user base exploding from 1 million users to over 800 million by April 2025, their existing systems were too rigid to handle the scale. OpenAI needed a solution that offered greater flexibility, control, and data transparency than traditional Customer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) vendors.
To address this, OpenAI chose an open-source approach and partnered with Ory. They adopted Ory Hydra, a web-scale authorization server, and leveraged CockroachDB for its distributed database architecture.
This collaboration allowed OpenAI to self-host its CIAM stack, giving them the ability to customize and innovate at an unprecedented pace. The partnership has been crucial in enabling OpenAI to securely manage a massive number of users, build new identity experiences, and handle an immense number of logins per second with a high degree of control and flexibility.
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