They promised AI would change the world. Instead, it’s just becoming another search engine with the same old ad-based business model.
OpenAI is rolling out advertising in the free tier of ChatGPT and in the new “go” plan at $8/month, promising shareholders a billion dollars in ad revenue as early as 2026. The three-year projection puts the figure somewhere around $25 billion by 2029 — numbers that sound dizzying, until you put them in perspective: Google pulled in $296 billion in revenue in 2025 alone. Three years from now, OpenAI would barely scrape 10% of what Big G does today.
So what’s actually going on?
With 800 million weekly active users on ChatGPT — only a fraction of them paying — OpenAI’s operating costs are staggering: rumours put spending at $2.5 billion in the first six months of 2025, with planned infrastructure investments that make the economics look even shakier.
All of this in a context where the A, now, no longer stands for Advanced.
It stands for Ads.