Analysis
OpenAI's ChatGPT advertising business has reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate roughly 200 days after launch, CNBC reported, with the company opening self-service ad-buying access to marketers in India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa this week. ChatGPT Ads are now live in more than 40 countries.
The run-rate figure is a snapshot, not booked annual revenue -- it comes from multiplying the current month's ad revenue by 12, Forbes noted, meaning the actual dollars collected so far are a fraction of the figure being cited in headlines.
Still, the trajectory is real: OpenAI is targeting $2.5 billion in advertising revenue for the current year, and says overall annualized revenue is tracking toward more than $40 billion -- roughly double where the company stood at the end of 2025.
Ads currently make up about 2.5% of OpenAI's total revenue -- a small slice next to enterprise contracts, consumer subscriptions and API usage, but a genuinely new revenue line that didn't exist 200 days ago, arriving as OpenAI's own infrastructure spending commitments -- including its ties to SB Energy's Ohio data centers -- run well ahead of any single new business line's ability to fund them on its own.