Previously, the CEO of OpenAI expressed clear reservations about advertising, warning that integrating advertising with artificial intelligence could raise concerns about user trust and the independence of the response.
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This stance changed when the company began testing ads within its chatbot via free and low-cost subscriptions, a move OpenAI described as supporting continued access and investment.
But this change sparked a debate about the future of business models in the generative artificial intelligence sector, and signaled a profound shift in how the entire industry is financed.
From free preview to hybrid revenue model
When OpenAI launched its ChatGBT chatbot in November 2022, it offered it as a free research preview, and a paid subscription was not the basis of its launch model.
Two months later, in February 2023, the company launched the "ChatGBT Plus" subscription for $20 a month, while continuing to offer a free version of the service, thus beginning the process of building a hybrid revenue model that combines free access and paid subscriptions.
In January 2026, OpenAI announced that it planned to test ads through its free and low-cost subscription, justifying this by the desire to expand access to AI capabilities and reduce the need to pay for wider use, while confirming that other subscriptions would remain ad-free.
The test began in the United States , gradually expanding to other countries, including Britain, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea, before the ads reached 31 European markets in August, and then to 7 additional countries in Southeast Asia and Taiwan in September, bringing the service to over 60 countries.
The company said in September 2026 that its advertising platform had exceeded an annual revenue rate of $1 billion within 200 days, with tens of thousands of advertisers, as it tied advertising to infrastructure costs and continued investment in free and low-cost subscriptions.
Instead of OpenAI bearing the cost of providing the service to the free user alone, it introduces an "advertiser" who pays for access to that user, so that some access remains free or low-cost, while the platform itself becomes an advertising marketplace.
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