OpenAI is projecting $100 billion in advertising revenue by 2030, according to an Axios report citing investor presentations — a forecast that, if realized, would make advertising the single largest driver of the company’s revenue by the end of the decade. The projection is built on the assumption that ChatGPT reaches 2.75 billion weekly active users by 2030, a threshold currently met only by Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp.
Early Results Fuel the Confidence
The ambitious forecast is not purely aspirational. OpenAI’s U.S. advertising pilot, launched in February for free-tier and ChatGPT Go users, crossed $100 million in annualized revenue within roughly six weeks — a milestone reached while fewer than 20 percent of eligible users were seeing ads on any given day, suggesting significant room to scale. More than 600 advertisers have signed on to the program, including Best Buy, Target, Expedia, Adobe, and Ford.
OpenAI is already expanding the pilot to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and launched self-serve ad tools in April. Ads appear at the bottom of ChatGPT responses, are labeled as sponsored, and are targeted based on conversation context rather than persistent browsing data — a distinction the company has emphasized to privacy-conscious users and regulators.
A Roadmap That Dwarfs Analyst Expectations
OpenAI’s internal targets far exceed Wall Street’s estimates. Evercore ISI projected advertising could become a $25 billion business for OpenAI by 2030 — a figure the analyst called reasonable given ChatGPT’s scale and high-intent user queries. OpenAI’s own forecast is four times that number, reflecting a belief that AI-native advertising on a conversational platform at this scale represents a fundamentally different opportunity than traditional display advertising.
The Road to Profitability
OpenAI’s annualized revenue has reached approximately $25 billion as of early 2026, but the company is not yet profitable and does not expect to be until 2030. Its premium ad pricing — around $60 per thousand impressions, roughly triple Meta’s typical rates — will need to be sustained at scale to deliver on the projected trajectory. Whether advertisers will continue paying a premium for placement in AI-generated conversations as the format matures will be one of the defining questions in OpenAI’s path to its first profitable year.
