"OpenAI's advertising experiment reflects the enormous financial pressures facing the company. OpenAI does not expect to be profitable until 2030 and has committed to spend about $1.4 trillion on massive data centers and chips for AI. According to financial documents obtained by The Wall Street Journal in November, OpenAI expects to burn through roughly $9 billion this year while generating $13 billion in revenue."
"OpenAI's embrace of ads appears to come reluctantly, since it runs counter to a "personal bias" against advertising that Altman has shared in earlier public statements. For example, during a fireside chat at Harvard University in 2024, Altman said he found the combination of ads and AI "uniquely unsettling," implying that he would not like it if the chatbot itself changed its responses due to advertising pressure."
"Only about 5 percent of ChatGPT's 800 million weekly users pay for subscriptions, so it's not enough to cover all of OpenAI's operating costs. Not everyone is convinced ads will solve OpenAI's financial problems. "I am extremely bearish on this ads product," tech critic Ed Zitron wrote on Bluesky. "Even if this becomes a good business line, OpenAI's services cost too much for it to matter!""
OpenAI faces substantial financial pressure, with plans to spend about $1.4 trillion on data centers and chips and expecting no profitability until 2030. Financial documents indicate a projected cash burn of roughly $9 billion this year alongside $13 billion in revenue. Only about 5 percent of ChatGPT's 800 million weekly users subscribe, leaving subscriptions insufficient to cover operating costs. Critics question whether ads can solve the funding gap. OpenAI expresses reluctance about advertising and emphasizes measures to separate banner ads from the chatbot's conversational outputs to avoid advertiser influence.
Read at Ars Technica
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