OpenAI announced last week that it will begin testing advertisements in ChatGPT’s free tier and a new $8 monthly subscription called ChatGPT Go, confirming earlier reports that beta code revealed the company was developing advertising capabilities.
The San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company said ads will appear at the bottom of ChatGPT’s responses and will be clearly labeled as sponsored content. Users of Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise subscription tiers will not see advertisements.
The move follows discoveries in December 2025 that ChatGPT’s Android beta application contained code references for ad-related features. Former Meta executive Fidji Simo, who joined OpenAI to lead its applications division, has been overseeing the advertising initiative.
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Read: ChatGPT to Add Advertising, Beta Code Reveals
“We will not accept money to influence the answer ChatGPT gives you, and we keep your conversations private from advertisers,” CEO Sam Altman wrote on X. “It is clear to us that a lot of people want to use a lot of AI and don’t want to pay, so we are hopeful a business model like this can work.”
The advertising rollout comes as OpenAI faces severe financial challenges. The company projects losses could reach $14 billion in 2026, nearly triple its expected losses for 2025, according to an October 2024 analysis by The Information. The Register reported the company lost more than $11.5 billion in the third quarter alone, citing numbers from Microsoft‘s financial filings.
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ChatGPT Go, priced at $8 per month in the US, offers users 10 times more messages, file uploads, and image creation than the free tier. The subscription was launched in 171 countries beginning in August 2025, before expanding to the US. About 5% of ChatGPT’s weekly active users, or approximately 35 million people, paid for Plus or Pro subscriptions as of July 2025. The platform has approximately 800 million monthly users, according to CNN Business.
OpenAI said advertising tests will begin “in the coming weeks” for logged-in adults in the United States. The company stated it will not show ads to users under 18 or near conversations about sensitive topics, including health, mental health, and politics.
OpenAI has committed to spending $1.4 trillion on artificial intelligence infrastructure over the next eight years. The company raised $6.6 billion in funding in October 2024 at a valuation of $157 billion.
As CNN pointed out, Altman had previously expressed reservations about advertising in ChatGPT. In a 2024 interview, he said he “hates” ads and called combining ads with AI “uniquely unsettling”. He had also described advertising as a “last resort” business model.
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