OpenAI is definitely, maybe thinking about ads for ChatGPT

OpenAI might bring ads to ChatGPT, emphasis on might.

Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told the Financial Times on Monday that the AI company was considering an ad model, adding that it plans to be "thoughtful about when and where we implement them."

However, Friar backtracked a little in a follow-up statement to the outlet, saying "while we’re open to exploring other revenue streams in the future, we have no active plans to pursue advertising."

This is in line with what OpenAI told Mashable when it launched ChatGPT Search at the end of October. When asked whether the company planned on introducing ads to the AI-powered search engine, a spokesperson said, "we don’t have any plans for ads."

That said, OpenAI has been hiring lots of top monetization talent lately. Shivakumar Venkataraman, formerly on Google Search's advertising team, became an OpenAI VP in May, and Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil who led product teams at Instagram and X came on board in June. On Tuesday, OpenAI hired its first Chief Marketing Officer Kate Rouch, who oversaw Coinbase's Super Bowl ads.

OpenAI recently closed a massive funding round of $6 billion, giving the company a valuation of $150 billon. According to the New York Times, OpenAI's revenue projections underpinning the largest VC round of all time expect to bring in $11.6 billion in 2025. This is despite the fact that OpenAI currently operates at a loss of $2.3 billon. So somehow OpenAI has to essentially triple its revenue despite the huge cost of maintaining and developing AI models. That money has to come from somewhere, and upping its premium subscriptions might not be enough.

Of course bringing ads to ChatGPT risks enshittifying the product and alienating users. This could be costly in a highly competitive environment with Anthropic, Perplexity, and Google Gemini developing similar tools.