OpenAI is considering advertising on its AI products

According to Financial Times sources familiar with the AI ​​technology market, OpenAI is hiring marketing and advertising specialists en masse from Meta* and Google, as well as other industry competitors. For example, in May, OpenAI hired Shivakumar Venkataraman, who previously led Google’s search advertising team, as vice president.

After the interview aired, Friar told the Financial Times that “although [OpenAI] We are open to exploring other sources of income in the future, we have no active plans to introduce advertising.” Friar previously held senior management positions at commerce management systems companies such as Nextdoor, Salesforce and Square. According to the publication’s interlocutor, The idea of ​​introducing advertising on the company’s products also has the support of its CEO, Sam Altman.

In the interview, Friar highlighted OpenAI’s chief product officer, Kevin Weil, who was previously responsible for bringing advertising products to market at major technology companies, including Instagram* and X (formerly Twitter). Friar described Weil as someone who “knows how advertising works on a product.”

Monetizing products through advertising is necessary for OpenAI due to the increasing costs of scaling and training new models, notes the New York Times. In 2024 alone, the company will spend at least $5 billion on development. At the same time, one of OpenAI’s main revenue streams right now is charging for access to the ChatGPT API, from which the company’s clients can build their models, and licensing the neural network to individual clients. and corporate.

However, while OpenAI’s rivals such as Perplexity are already testing AI search engine advertising, the company may face increasing market pressure to pursue similar revenue streams, the Financial Times notes.

Bloomberg previously estimated that ChatGPT in the two years since its market entry has contributed more than $8 trillion in capitalization to the world’s largest technology companies. OpenAI also hopes to reach one billion people in its products by 2025, relying on the development of new AI products and the creation of its own network of data centers.