OpenAI to Launch Ads: Reasons, Revenue Potential & Business Pivot

TradingKey - The problem for the generative AI market was that it had become a commoditized market with sky-high capital spending and a maze of corporate alliances. OpenAI has to make a damaging if delicate trade-off to keep its edge: That is as close as it is a route to independence. In 2026, the beleaguered OpenAI is transitioning from a research lab into a commercial platform — a pivot it had to take considering the mind-bending financial burden of building an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

What Is OpenAI?

What distinguishes OpenAI among others is a “tripartite constellation” of Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), and Oracle (ORCL), which provide the hardware, cloud computing, and financial means to train the models. The hardware comes from Nvidia; the relationship started as a vendor-client relationship and later evolved into a strategic partnership in October 2024 when Nvidia participated in OpenAI’s $6.6 billion funding round. This helps keep OpenAI atop the queue when it comes to scarce GPUs — especially since OpenAI has a joint plan to add at least 10 gigawatts of AI data centers. The big partner remains Microsoft, the biggest source of OpenAI's financial clout and its exclusive cloud provider. As part of the deal, Microsoft will get 75% of OpenAI’s profits until Microsoft's investment is recouped and then Microsoft will own 49%. There are, however, ever more complex mores evolving between this relationship and tensions about Microsoft’s separate AGI plans. In September 2025, OpenAI signed a massive deal with Oracle to provide data-center power at 4.5 gigawatts beginning in 2027 to relieve capacity constraints.

Still, OpenAI is looking to solve for “vendor lock-in.” That includes the “Stargate” program — a $500 billion infrastructure partnership between Microsoft and a consortium to build massive U.S. data centers. To top it all off, OpenAI is also working on breaking Nvidia’s de facto monopoly by partnering with Broadcom (AVGO) to create custom AI “inference” chips. With OpenAI's own hardware designed specifically for GPT models, OpenAI plans to lower its computing expenses and reduce OpenAI's reliance on high-margin Nvidia products — with deployment expected in the second half of 2026.

The AI Leader is Turning to Advertising

Why It Needs Ad Business

Expanding into advertising might seem an odd turn for a company that has been focused on the ambitious goal of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). But the shift for OpenAI is a practical adjustment to the mind-boggling capital needs of the AI space. OpenAI made more than $20 billion in revenue in 2025 but is still not profitable and is continuing to “burn through piles of money.” The group expects positive free cash flow, positive operating income, and net income not earlier than 2028 to 2030. As the training costs for next-generation models like GPT-5 continue to spike, the subscription revenue alone cannot keep pace with the multibillion-dollar infrastructure needed.

The foray into advertising is also a play to better monetize OpenAI's massive user base. ChatGPT reached 900 million weekly users by late 2025, making ChatGPT one of the largest consumer platforms ever. Much of this user base is in the free or cheap tiers, which burn insane amounts of compute without carving out high margins. Making ads available at those levels will help to cover the “compute” expense of running millions of users, and OpenAI can double down on democratizing AI, making AI accessible to everyone who sees value in it, no matter if they can pay for a subscription model with premium features.

And now OpenAI is expanding beyond a simple chatbot to a “discovery platform.” Instead of a standard search engine with a giant list of links, ChatGPT has become an interactive, playful space where users can ask about products and services. Wall Street analysts say OpenAI, if OpenAI can get ads to work without being intrusive, may be the next big destination for commercial queries that have long gone to Google (GOOG) (GOOGL). This turns OpenAI’s technology lead into a self-sustaining financial giant, able to fund the long-term, high-risk chase after superintelligence — the group also has a unique opportunity to take a slice of global marketing spend, and OpenAI ultimately sees that as a way to fund OpenAI's big visions.

Will OpenAI Be a Threat to Google Ad?

OpenAI’s ability to compete with Google’s near-monopoly in the advertising market is being eagerly debated on Wall Street. Google was once the undisputed ruler of the “commercial query” domain, but ChatGPT’s search and agent-like interface makes finding information more direct and simpler. OpenAI should be able to bake in ads that feel a bit more like useful recommendations and less like a barrage of interruptions, and OpenAI maybe could get some of those high-value commercial queries that have historically driven ad revenue for Google. OpenAI wants to create OpenAI's own ad stream to profit from the very tool Google leveraged to build its empire — but this time, using the tool to finance the expensive race for AGI. And while Google has a truly integrated Android and Workspace ecosystem, OpenAI's "viral leader" status, combined with OpenAI's recent pivot into autonomous AI agents, means OpenAI may have more potential to disrupt traditional searches.

OpenAI said OpenAI was trying to find a balance in advertising so that messages are selective, transparent, and have as little impact on users as possible. The current plan is to only run test ads in the US, and only to users with free or low-cost subscription accounts as of now. Paid high users like Plus, Pro, Team, and Enterprise users will still be ad-free. There were hardcore ethical guardrails OpenAI put in place to keep OpenAI's users’ trust: the ads would be clearly marked, OpenAI wouldn’t sell users’ private conversations to advertisers, and, most significantly, ad placements wouldn’t influence (or be the source of) the answers ChatGPT provided.

The advertising agency could potentially transform OpenAI’s finances by 2030 if everything goes smoothly. Wall Street analysts such as Evercore ISI’s Mark Mahaney expect this category to grow into a $25 billion a year revenue business. Since OpenAI generated more than $20 billion in topline revenue in 2025, the ad business working could double the current size of OpenAI's revenue magnitude. That’s a massive revenue stream that would be crucial to help cover the extraordinary expenses of AGI development, and that would make OpenAI a very attractive investment for venture capitalists who want to see exponential user growth eventually translate into sustainable profits.

How to Invest in OpenAI: Shareholders and Ecosystem Participants

OpenAI is at the forefront of AI, and investors want to know how to buy stock in the company. As OpenAI has a distinct “capped-profit” model, and OpenAI's leadership has spoken about concerns about public market pressures, a direct public offering might not be in the cards anytime soon. That’s not to say investors are completely out of luck, as the company has a massive ecosystem and three avenues for investors to consider: through OpenAI's largest corporate shareholders, via focused funds that hold private stakes, or through infrastructure firms that act as foundational building blocks for OpenAI.

Significant Corporate Shareholders and Partners

The closest thing to a backdoor to OpenAI is through some of OpenAI's largest corporate backers, namely Microsoft. Microsoft has expanded on Microsoft's initial $1 billion investment in 2019 to a multi-billion multi-year partnership. As part of the deal, Microsoft receives 75% of OpenAI’s profits until Microsoft recoups Microsoft's investment, after which Microsoft will have a 49% stake in the for-profit branch. This close integration has led Microsoft now to be the primary commercial partner — not just the passive investor — putting OpenAI’s models on Microsoft's own Azure cloud platform, Bing search engine, and the Microsoft 365 productivity suite. For the individual investor, buying Microsoft stock is the way to play OpenAI’s potential profits and technological advances, albeit as part of a giant technology conglomerate. Other well-known companies such as Amazon (AMZN) Web Services and Infosys (INFY) also took part in the early funding rounds, although the nature of their ongoing financial commitments are not as clear-cut as Microsoft’s exclusive cloud provision.

Specialized Funds Holding Private Stakes

For people who don’t qualify as an “accredited investor” — which is generally a requirement to purchase private shares on secondary markets such as Hiive or EquityBee — publicly available venture funds provide a solution. Funds like the Fundrise Innovation Fund have bought stakes in OpenAI, giving retail investors the chance to invest in a portfolio of high-growth private tech companies for relatively small sums. These funds are essentially bridges that allow public investors access to the very same private equity deals previously reserved for institutional behemoths and ultra-high net worth individuals. Through investment in such a fund, an individual can achieve fractional exposure to OpenAI’s valuation, which has recently been quoted as high as $157 billion. While this approach, too, involves fees and is influenced by the performance of other firms in the fund’s portfolio, it is currently one of the very few ways to come close to direct ownership.

Companies Benefiting From OpenAI’s Growth

But a more general play is to invest in the “picks and shovels” of the AI revolution — the hardware and software companies without which OpenAI couldn’t operate. Nvidia is by far the best-known example in this group. Normally, the rise and fall of a single AI company wouldn’t have the ripple effect on the market that OpenAI’s do — after all, Nvidia is the major supplier of the GPUs needed to train and run large language models. In late 2024, Nvidia also participated in OpenAI’s $6.6 billion fundraising round, cementing Nvidia's position as a strategic partner rather than a mere supplier. Beyond hardware, cloud infrastructure providers and software companies that use OpenAI’s technology will also benefit. Companies such as Salesforce (CRM) and Atlassian (TEAM) have begun to embed GPT-based capabilities within their platforms to assist with customer relationship management and team collaboration. As OpenAI’s technology becomes the de facto enterprise AI standard, these integrators could improve their margins and keep clients on board — potentially adding a second level of indirect investment play in the AI ecosystem.