WSJ Tech News Briefing · Friday, September 18, 2026
OpenAI has rapidly built an advertising business on its ChatGPT platform, achieving an annualized run rate of $1 billion in August. The ads, initially plain text boxes with images at the bottom of conversations, have evolved to include carousels and sponsored agents. This growth is seen as crucial for OpenAI's anticipated public debut.
“Open AI has been rolling out ads on its flagship product, ChatGPT, since February. And it's been building out this new part of its business at a dizzying speed.”
“It depends on the day. The ad business is changing so quickly. We haven't really seen anything or any bill on an ad platform this quick.”
“Well, it just hit an annualized run rate of a billion dollars a couple of weeks ago in August. Which doesn't mean there's a billion dollars in the bank by any stretch. It means if they continue at this pace, they're going to hit that billion dollar figure in a year.”