OpenAI Explores Advertising on ChatGPT in Major Monetization Push

OpenAI Reportedly Looking for Ads Chief to Bring Advertisements on ChatGPT

Last year, OpenAI CFO also hinted that ads could show up on ChatGPT OpenAI is reportedly paving the path to bring ads on ChatGPT. The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) firm is looking to hire an executive who will head the company's monetisation efforts across all verticals, according to a report. Among other responsibilities, this individual will reportedly also be tasked with bringing ads to ChatGPT and its various interfaces. The executive is also said to focus on subscriptions and other revenue sources of the company. Not a lot of details about the ad integration are known at the moment. OpenAI Reportedly Plans to Bring Ads to ChatGPT According to a Sources report, OpenAI's CEO of Applications, Fidji Simo, is looking for a new hire who can head the company's monetisation division. Simo has reportedly met and interviewed several candidates for the position. The former head of the Facebook app is said to have also talked to some former colleagues for the role. It is unclear whether the firm has shortlisted any candidate. It is said that the selected candidate will become the company's head of monetisation and oversee different revenue generation efforts, which are not partnership or direct sales-driven. This would reportedly include subscriptions, application programming interfaces (APIs), new monetisation channels, as well as ad integration. The report claims that this new hire would directly report to Simo, instead of the company CEO, Sam Altman. Simo currently heads multiple divisions, including ChatGPT, APIs, partnerships with different companies, as well as new initiatives. Altman is said to oversee the research, infrastructure, consumer hardware, and safety teams. This is not the first time rumours about ads on ChatGPT have surfaced online. Last year, Sarah Frias, Chief Financial Officer at OpenAI, reportedly said in an interview that the company was considering creating an ad-based revenue model. However, the executive had also added that there were no active plans to pursue it. This might change if OpenAI hires someone to head its monetisation division. Notably, no other information about ads on ChatGPT is known. It is difficult to say whether the company will implement banner ads or in any other format. Additionally, it is also not known whether these ads will be shown to the free tier or even the paid subscribers. Some AI players have already leaned towards advertisements, however. For instance, Google has integrated ads in its AI Overviews, and Perplexity shows ads in certain search queries. In both cases, the ads are labelled.

OpenAI Searching for Ad Chief to Bolster Monetization | PYMNTS.com

Fidji Simo, the artificial intelligence (AI) startup's new CEO of applications, has been meeting with candidates for this role, per a report Wednesday (Sept. 24) by the tech industry-focused news site Sources. This new executive would oversee a team responsible for bringing ads to ChatGPT, and handle all monetization endeavors at OpenAI, including subscriptions, the report said. While talks are ongoing, Sources added, the successful applicant would report directly to Simo, who recently began at OpenAI after serving as Instacart's chief executive. PYMNTS has contacted OpenAI for comment but has not yet received a reply. A separate report Wednesday from Ad Week cites a recent job listing that shows OpenAI wants to hire a "Growth Paid Marketing Platform Engineer" to build in-house tools for ad platform integration, campaign management, and real-time attribution. This role, the report added, is part of a new "ChatGPT Growth team," and charged with "building the technical infrastructure behind OpenAI's paid marketing platform." Though OpenAI has said it was exploring ways to incorporate ads, the report added, the company has no on-platform capabilities. AdWeek describes the job listing as a rare sign of the company's plans for an in-house marketing platform integrated with ChatGPT. These reports came one day after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman used his personal blog to discuss his vision for AI, calling for it to become as universal as electricity. He also said delivering it at scale will require industrial-level infrastructure fueled by massive investment. "Our vision is simple: we want to create a factory that can produce a gigawatt of new AI infrastructure every week," Altman wrote. "The execution of this will be extremely difficult; it will take us years to get to this milestone and it will require innovation at every level of the stack, from chips to power to building to robotics. But we have been hard at work on this and believe it is possible." This vision comes as OpenAI's business is expanding rapidly. As PYMNTS reported, the company doubled its annual revenue to $12 billion in 2025, reflecting demand from enterprises and consumers for its generative AI products. At the same time, OpenAI forecasts that spending will jump to $115 billion through 2029, "underscoring the capital-intensive path it has chosen," PYMNTS wrote Wednesday.