OpenAI Ads Hit $1 Billion as IPO Looms
OpenAI Ads Hit $1 Billion as IPO Looms
The News
OpenAI said Monday that advertising on ChatGPT has hit a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate — less than 200 days after the business launched — as the company builds its pitch to investors ahead of an expected initial public offering.
The company called advertising "one pillar of OpenAI's diversified business model, alongside consumer subscriptions, enterprise offerings, and usage-based APIs," and said ad revenue now makes up a "material share of the business."
OpenAI is under pressure to justify a valuation CNBC reported at $852 billion.
How the Ads Work
Ads appear for OpenAI's Go subscribers and for its free tier, which the company says makes up the vast majority of ChatGPT's 1 billion weekly active users.
OpenAI said the ads are clearly labeled, do not influence ChatGPT's answers, and that advertisers do not get access to users' private conversations.
Timeline
CEO Sam Altman told an event at Harvard University that "ads plus AI is sort of uniquely unsettling to me," adding, "I kind of think of ads as a last resort for us for a business model."
OpenAI began testing ads inside ChatGPT in the United States — a move that was both highly anticipated and controversial.
Rival Anthropic built its first Super Bowl campaign around mocking OpenAI's ad push, portraying a chatbot that seizes on user queries to serve emotionally charged ads.
CNBC reported the ad pilot had topped $100 million in annualized revenue in under two months.
OpenAI said ChatGPT Ads are live in more than 40 countries.
OpenAI announced the $1 billion run rate and began rolling out self-service ad buying across India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
Reactions
Anthropic's Super Bowl spot was the loudest pushback — a direct attack on the idea of an ad-funded chatbot. Altman called the trolling "funny" but "clearly dishonest," according to Business Insider.
OpenAI's own framing is defensive as much as triumphant: the company is presenting the ad line as evidence that it is not a one-product business.
What's Next
"Our next phase of growth will bring ChatGPT Ads to more markets and introduce additional formats, objectives, buying options, and measurement capabilities," OpenAI said in a release. "We will also explore new ways for businesses to interact with consumers in more native ways in ChatGPT."
Business Insider reported OpenAI's IPO could come as soon as this year, though the expectation is that Anthropic lists first; OpenAI said in June that its own listing "may be a while."
More
The ad milestone lands during a rough stretch inside the company. OpenAI has shut down Sora, its short-lived AI video app, to focus on the core business, and has lost a string of senior executives this year, including COO Brad Lightcap and data center chief Chris Malone.
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