OpenAI Expands ChatGPT Ads to 89 Countries

OpenAI will expand ChatGPT Ads to 26 more countries, bringing the service to 89 countries worldwide. Free users and Go subscribers in Argentina, Peru, Nigeria, South Africa and Ukraine will start seeing ads. The move puts OpenAI’s advertising business in front of a larger international audience.

A Growing Commercial Reach

OpenAI said ads remain separate from ChatGPT’s answers to prompts, don’t shape those answers and carry clear labels. The company says it wants ads to be “useful to people as they pursue their goals and make decisions — and effective for the businesses that advertise with us.” It also sees a chance to help users find products and services as they explore needs, weigh options and make decisions.

The company has called its eight-month-old advertising product a new business pillar. It joins enterprise contracts, consumer subscriptions and usage-based application programming interfaces, or APIs. Digital advertising has long brought in major revenue for companies such as Google and Meta.

OpenAI’s ad business hit a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in August, up from $100 million in March. The company said more than 100,000 advertisers had run campaigns on the platform. Those figures show the scale of the business OpenAI is building as it adds countries where users may see ads.

Competition and Public Listings

OpenAI started testing ads in the United States in February. Rival Anthropic mocked the move, made OpenAI’s advertising push the subject of its first Super Bowl campaign and vowed to keep its competing chatbot, Claude, ad-free.

Both companies are preparing for initial public offerings widely expected to be major, though neither has publicly said when it plans to debut. OpenAI executives have indicated they’re weighing a 2027 listing. Anthropic leaders have met with prospective investors in recent weeks.

OpenAI plans to create more ChatGPT Ads formats, measurement capabilities and buying options. It’s also exploring new ways for businesses to interact natively with ChatGPT consumers. The expansion and planned ad products place business promotion more firmly in the company’s stated commercial strategy.

Meta’s AI Spending and Audience

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 efforts would 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. Its early success helped Meta finish September with its best month on Wall Street since 2022. Facebook and Instagram have introduced AI agents to a wide audience, while the company and its AI chief, Alexandr Wang, have continued releasing foundation models and updates, including Muse Wonder, released the previous Monday.

Investors were expected to track any rise in Meta’s data-center capital expenditures for computing infrastructure supporting AI agents and foundation models. In July, after second-quarter earnings, Meta narrowed its 2026 capex guidance to between $130 billion and $145 billion, lifting the low end of its previous range by $5 billion. Free cash flow for that period dropped to $784 million from $8.55 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. FactSet analysts expected Meta’s capex to reach $196.3 billion in 2027.

StreetAccount expected Meta’s third-quarter daily active people figure to reach 3.65 billion, almost unchanged from the prior quarter. That measure counts users across Meta’s family of apps, including Facebook and Instagram.