OpenAI will show ChatGPT ads to free users and Go subscribers in 26 additional countries, bringing the service to 89 countries. Its advertising business reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in August. The company said ads sit apart from prompt responses, don't influence answers and carry clear labels.
Who Pays, Who Earns
Users in Argentina, Peru, Nigeria, South Africa and Ukraine, among other countries, will start seeing ads. OpenAI said its ad business grew from $100 million in March to a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in August; more than 100,000 advertisers had run campaigns on the platform.
The company called advertising one of its business pillars, alongside enterprise contracts, consumer subscriptions and usage-based application programming interfaces, or APIs. Google and Meta have long relied on digital advertising as a major source of revenue.
“Our goal is to make ads useful to people as they pursue their goals and make decisions — and effective for the businesses that advertise with us,” OpenAI said in a release. The company said it sees a chance to help people find products and services, while helping businesses “of every size grow and thrive” as more people turn to ChatGPT to explore needs, weigh options and make decisions.
OpenAI started testing ads in the United States in February. Anthropic put the ad push at the center of its first Super Bowl campaign, promising to keep its competing chatbot, Claude, ad-free. It also ridiculed OpenAI’s advertising effort.
OpenAI plans to develop additional ad formats, measurement capabilities and buying options. It's also exploring ways for businesses to interact natively with ChatGPT consumers.
AI Investment and Investor Returns
OpenAI and Anthropic are getting ready for initial public offerings widely expected to be major, although neither company has publicly said when it plans to debut. OpenAI executives have indicated they're considering a 2027 listing. Anthropic leaders have met with prospective investors in recent weeks.
Meta was due to report third-quarter earnings after the market closed Wednesday. Analysts polled by LSEG expected earnings per share of $5.75 and revenue of $63.2 billion. Investors wanted signs that the company’s artificial-intelligence work could support future sales.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Muse AI personal assistant debuted in September and climbed to the top of Apple’s iOS App Store. That early success helped Meta finish September with its best month on Wall Street since 2022. Facebook and Instagram, Meta’s businesses, have introduced AI agents to a broad audience. Meta and its AI chief, Alexandr Wang, have kept releasing foundation models and updates, including Muse Wonder, released the previous Monday.
The Cost of Building AI
Investors were expected to scrutinize Meta’s data-center capital expenditures, or capex, for the computing infrastructure needed to support AI agents and foundation models. After its second-quarter earnings in July, Meta narrowed its 2026 capex guidance to between $130 billion and $145 billion, lifting the low end of its prior range by $5 billion.
Meta’s free cash flow fell to $784 million in that period, down from $8.55 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. FactSet analysts expected Meta’s capex to hit $196.3 billion in 2027.
StreetAccount expected Meta’s third-quarter daily active people, or DAP, to reach 3.65 billion, almost unchanged from the previous quarter. The measure counts users across Meta’s family of apps, including Facebook and Instagram.
The articles cover company revenue, advertiser campaigns, investor expectations and data-center spending. They identify no union, strike, organized worker response, government action or reform proposal tied to the companies’ advertising and AI plans.
- openai
- chatgpt ads
- meta
- artificial intelligence
- digital advertising
- mark zuckerberg
- anthropic
- ai spending