OpenAI predicts that its advertising revenue will increase dramatically, reaching approximately $2.5 billion in 2026, and will continue to double thereafter, optimistically forecasting that it will reach approximately $100 billion by 2030.

Information released to some investors indicates that OpenAI expects to earn approximately $2.5 billion (approximately 400 billion yen) in advertising revenue in 2026. This suggests that OpenAI, which has shifted its focus to profitability by introducing advertising to ChatGPT, considers advertising to be a core part of its business.

OpenAI projects $100 billion in ad revenue by 2030
https://www.axios.com/2026/04/09/openai-100-billion-in-ad-revenue

According to sources, OpenAI explained that advertising revenue, which is projected to reach approximately $2.5 billion in 2026, will swell to approximately $11 billion (approximately 1.75 trillion yen) in 2027, then to approximately $25 billion (approximately 4 trillion yen) in 2028, approximately $53 billion (approximately 8.44 trillion yen) in 2029, and approximately $100 billion (approximately 16 trillion yen) in 2030.

These predictions reportedly assume that OpenAI's products will reach 2.75 billion weekly active users by 2030, taking market share from the global advertising market currently dominated by Google, Meta, Amazon, and TikTok.

OpenAI's 'ChatGPT' has over 900 million weekly active users as of the end of February 2026. Codex, an AI coding agent, has also seen its weekly active users more than triple since the beginning of 2026, reaching 1.6 million, indicating steady growth. As a result, OpenAI is currently experiencing an investment boom, raising $110 billion (approximately 17 trillion yen) from companies such as Amazon, NVIDIA, and SoftBank.

OpenAI announces that ChatGPT has over 900 million weekly active users, over 50 million paid subscribers, and Codex has reached 1.6 million weekly active users - GIGAZINE

OpenAI has received investment from multiple companies in the past, but it has been pointed out that the enormous costs of providing high-performance technology to a large number of users have resulted in OpenAI being heavily in the red. OpenAI has been working to secure profitability by displaying advertisements since February 2026, and is expected to continue promoting this advertising strategy as its main source of revenue.

According to experts, OpenAI's position in the advertising market is likely to be 'below Meta but above X.' Google holds the power in the advertising market by displaying search results that pinpoint the products users are looking for, but OpenAI's flagship product, ChatGPT, is a system that makes it easy to advertise what users are looking for, similar to Google Search. For this reason, it is easier to earn money from advertising than X or Meta, which are less relevant, but it does not have the same scale as Meta, hence its position in this market. However, if OpenAI grows in size, it has the potential to become a force to be reckoned with Google.

Experts predict OpenAI's advertising strategy as it finally starts placing ads on ChatGPT - GIGAZINE

However, at the time of writing, OpenAI was not particularly large, and it didn't have many points of differentiation from other companies such as Anthropic, which provides the AI 'Claude.' In this context, investors might think that it would be difficult to secure profits even if they raised a large amount of capital, so Axios, which reported on the matter, said that OpenAI was trying to show that it has multiple revenue streams to match its ever-increasing computing costs.