OpenAI said Monday that ChatGPT Ads, its advertising business, has reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate, Reuters and Axios reported. Axios said the milestone came less than 200 days after launch. The company is expanding Ads Manager so advertisers in India, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa can buy ChatGPT ads directly, a tool already live in the United States, Reuters said.
This is the revenue milestone and self-serve expansion, not the earlier India user-facing ads rollout. OpenAI started testing ads in ChatGPT in the United States earlier this year and has steadily added advertisers and markets as it leans on advertising to lift overall revenue ahead of a potential IPO, Reuters reported. Ads appear for users on the free tier and the lower-priced Go plan. In April, OpenAI said its U.S. ads pilot crossed $100 million in annualized revenue within six weeks of launch, according to Reuters.
OpenAI told Axios that tens of thousands of advertisers now use ChatGPT Ads, which is available in more than 40 countries. Most campaigns use cost-per-click and outcome-optimized bidding, the company said. Ads Manager has helped draw small- and medium-sized businesses, which now represent a “material share” of the ads business, Reuters and Axios reported. Advertisers outside the United States are a growing share of revenue, OpenAI said, without giving further detail.
The $1 billion figure is an annualized run rate, not cash already booked for a full year. Emarketer AI analyst Nate Elliott told Reuters the announcement was “incredibly impressive and terribly disappointing,” because the pace still falls well short of OpenAI’s $2.5 billion advertising revenue target for 2026. Axios, citing a source familiar with investor presentations, said OpenAI has told investors it expects $2.5 billion in ad revenue this year. Competing in ads means challenging Alphabet’s Google and Meta, which each collect hundreds of billions in ad revenue annually, Reuters noted. OpenAI confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO earlier this year and is reportedly expected to go public in 2027 or sooner.