Two years after warning that advertising would be a “last resort” for his AI chatbot, Sam Altman is doing exactly that. OpenAI is preparing to put paid messages directly into ChatGPT, turning one of the most hyped technologies of the decade into a more familiar ad-supported product. The shift captures how quickly idealistic visions of AI collide with the brutal economics of running models at planetary scale.
From ‘last resort’ to live experiment inside ChatGPT
OpenAI is now officially moving ahead with plans to test advertising inside ChatGPT, starting with a subset of users in the United States. The company has framed the rollout as an experiment on the free tier, with sponsored content appearing alongside the chatbot’s responses rather than as traditional display banners. That is a striking turn for Chief Executive Sam Altman, who had publicly described ads as something he wanted to avoid, a fallback option that risked compromising user trust and the product’s sense of neutrality.
The reversal is easier to understand once you look at the scale of OpenAI’s infrastructure ambitions. The company now has roughly $1.4 trillion in spending commitments on data centers and related hardware, a figure that would be eye watering even for a mature tech giant, let alone a still-young AI firm. In that context, testing ads in ChatGPT is less a philosophical pivot than a financial necessity, a way to turn a wildly popular but costly service into something that can help carry its own weight.
The ad model OpenAI is testing, and why it matters
What OpenAI is trying to build inside ChatGPT looks less like old-school banner advertising and more like a search engine blended with a conversational assistant. On Friday, the company announced that some users will start seeing sponsored messages that resemble regular answers, with a mix of text, image and some advertising copy woven into the chat interface. The test is limited to the free tier, which is where usage is heaviest and where OpenAI has the most pressure to monetize without scaring away the audience that made ChatGPT a household name in the first place.
Altman and his team have signaled that they want to prioritize relevance and user experience over raw ad volume, a stance that will be tested as soon as real revenue targets arrive. The company is officially preparing to test ads in ChatGPT as it looks to increase revenue amid $1.4 trillion scale ambitions and an intensifying AI arms race. For advertisers, the appeal is obvious: instead of bidding on a line of blue links, brands could pay to appear as the “helpful” suggestion inside a conversation about booking a trip, buying a car or choosing a new phone, a format that blurs the line between recommendation and promotion.
That blurring is exactly why this experiment matters beyond OpenAI’s balance sheet. When a chatbot that sounds authoritative starts mixing organic answers with paid placements, users may struggle to tell where the model’s judgment ends and an advertiser’s influence begins. The early tests will set expectations for how clearly labeled, or how subtle, those commercial messages are, and whether ChatGPT feels more like a trusted assistant or a personalized billboard.
Altman’s ‘last resort’ and the Facebook-style trajectory
When Sam Altman first floated the idea of advertising around ChatGPT, he cast it as something he hoped to avoid, a “last resort” that would only be necessary if other business models failed. Two years later, that last resort is here, and the company’s trajectory is starting to resemble the path taken by earlier internet giants. What began as a mission to keep AI aligned with human values is now intertwined with the familiar pressures of growth, monetization and investor expectations.
Commentary from Takeaways by Bloomberg AI has already drawn parallels between OpenAI’s move and the evolution of social networks that promised to keep the internet free and dynamic, only to become dominated by targeted ads. Chief Executive Sam Altman now faces the same dilemma that once confronted the founders of those platforms: how to keep a service widely accessible without letting the advertising tail wag the product dog. If ChatGPT’s recommendations start to feel skewed toward whoever pays, the company risks eroding the trust that made the chatbot valuable in the first place.
Restructuring, Microsoft and the pressure to pay for the AI arms race
The decision to lean into advertising does not exist in a vacuum, it sits on top of a sweeping corporate overhaul that has reshaped OpenAI’s incentives. After a year-long process, the company completed its restructuring into a for-profit business, signing a new pact with Microsoft and handing more formal control over the commercial side of the operation. That shift opened the door to a potential IPO and an AI spending spree, but it also locked in expectations that OpenAI would behave less like a research lab and more like a high-growth tech company.
Executives have been explicit about what that means. In an interview framed around Why OpenAI’s restructuring could reshape the artificial intelligence landscape, chief financial officer Sarah Friar described how the new structure gives the company more room to raise capital and pour money into artificial general intelligence, even as the boundaries of that concept remain undefined. Once you commit to that kind of open-ended, capital intensive race, every major product, including ChatGPT, is under pressure to contribute meaningfully to the bottom line. Ads are not just a revenue experiment, they are a signal that OpenAI is willing to borrow from the playbook of the very platforms it once sought to transcend.
Billions burned, investors watching and what comes next for users
Behind the scenes, the financial stakes are stark. OpenAI is burning through billions of dollars as it trains larger models, deploys them across consumer and enterprise products and locks in long term cloud and chip supply. On Friday, the company acknowledged that it will begin testing advertisements inside the ChatGPT app for some US users in a bid to expand its commercial base, a move that sits alongside other efforts like premium subscriptions and enterprise licensing. The ad test is not a side project, it is part of a broader attempt to turn a viral product into a sustainable business that can support the cost of running advanced AI at scale, as described in On Friday reporting.
Investors and analysts are already asking whether even aggressive monetization will be enough. OpenAI has said its job for this year is making AI actually useful as it tries to turn experimental tools into everyday utilities that people and businesses will pay for. Still, some investors and analysts are concerned about OpenAI’s huge financial commitments and whether the startup will generate enough cash to justify them, with one cited example of a token being sold for $0.70 in huge volume as a sign of speculative pressure around AI-linked assets, according to Still. For everyday users, the near term impact will be more tangible: the next time they ask ChatGPT for a restaurant recommendation or travel tip, they may find that the answer comes with a subtle “sponsored” label attached, a small marker of how quickly the economics of AI are catching up with its ideals.
Altman and OpenAI have tried to reassure people that they will move carefully. In a note explaining that ChatGPT Moves Forward With his team emphasized that they would test formats, prioritize user experience over revenue and keep the core service accessible. Whether that balance holds will depend on how aggressively the company leans into targeting, how transparent it is about sponsored content and how willing users are to accept a chatbot that now has to serve two masters: the person asking the question and the advertiser paying to be part of the answer.
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