NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Amazon are in talks to invest up to $60 billion in OpenAI, valuing the company at around $730 billion. The talks highlight intensifying competition among technology giants to secure strategic positions in the rapidly expanding AI sector.
NVIDIA is said to be considering the largest commitment, potentially investing as much as $30 billion, while Microsoft may add less than $10 billion despite its long-standing partnership with OpenAI.
Amazon could contribute more than $10 billion, strengthening its cloud and infrastructure ties with the company as demand for large-scale AI computing continues to rise.
OpenAI and NVIDIA are advancing plans to deploy large-scale data centre capacity, with a multi-year rollout starting in late 2026. The project aims to deliver large-scale high-performance computing, supporting OpenAI’s push towards artificial general intelligence and global expansion.
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Worldcoin jumped 40% after reports that OpenAI is developing a biometric social platform to verify users and eliminate bots. The proposed network would reportedly integrate AI tools while relying on biometric identification to ensure proof of personhood.
Sources cited by Forbes claim the project aims to create a humans-only platform, differentiating itself from existing social networks, including X. Development is said to be led by a small internal team, with work reportedly underway since early 2025.
Biometric verification could involve Apple’s Face ID or the World Orb scanner, a device linked to the World project co-founded by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman.
The report sparked a sharp rally in Worldcoin, though part of the gains later reversed amid wider market weakness. Despite the brief surge, Worldcoin has remained sharply lower over the past year amid weak market sentiment and ongoing privacy concerns.
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SoftBank is in discussions to invest an additional $30 billion in OpenAI, as the Japanese conglomerate deepens its commitment to the AI pioneer. The potential funding round could reach $100 billion, valuing OpenAI at approximately $830 billion.
Chief Executive Masayoshi Son has taken an aggressive approach in the AI race, following a $41 billion investment last year that secured an 11 percent stake. OpenAI is facing increasing operational costs to train and maintain its AI models while competing with Alphabet’s Google.
Both SoftBank and OpenAI are also investors in Stargate, a $500 billion project to build AI data centres critical to US efforts to maintain a technological edge over China. The ambitious plan highlights the strategic importance of AI infrastructure in the global market.
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Advertising is set to be introduced within the free ChatGPT service, signalling a shift in how the platform will be monetised as its user base continues to expand rapidly. The move reflects OpenAI’s plans to turn widespread adoption into a sustainable revenue stream.
The company confirmed that ad testing will begin in the coming weeks, with sponsored content shown at the bottom of relevant ChatGPT responses. OpenAI said advertisements will be clearly labelled and separated from organic answers.
ChatGPT now serves more than 800 million users globally, most of whom currently access the service at no cost. Despite the high valuation, the company has continued to operate at a loss while expanding its infrastructure and AI capabilities.
Advertising represents OpenAI’s latest effort to diversify income beyond paid subscriptions and enterprise services. Sponsored recommendations will be shown only when products or services are deemed relevant to the user’s ongoing conversation.
The shift places OpenAI closer to traditional digital platform business models, raising broader questions about how commercial incentives may shape conversational AI systems as they become central gateways to online information.
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OpenAI has launched the Education for Countries programme, a new global initiative designed to support governments in modernising education systems and preparing workforces for an AI-driven economy.
The programme responds to a widening gap between rapid advances in AI capabilities and people’s ability to use them effectively in everyday learning and work.
Education systems are positioned at the centre of closing that gap, as research suggests a significant share of core workplace skills will change by the end of the decade.
By integrating AI tools, training and research into schools and universities, national education frameworks can evolve alongside technological change and better equip students for future labour markets.
The programme combines access to tools such as ChatGPT Edu and advanced language models with large-scale research on learning outcomes, tailored national training schemes and internationally recognised certifications.
A global network of governments, universities and education leaders will also share best practices and shape responsible approaches to AI use in classrooms.
Initial partners include Estonia, Greece, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Slovakia, Trinidad and Tobago and the United Arab Emirates. Early national rollouts, particularly in Estonia, already involve tens of thousands of students and educators, with further countries expected to join later in 2026.
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The AI firm, OpenAI, plans to introduce advertising within ChatGPT for logged-in adult users, marking a structural shift in how brands engage audiences through conversational interfaces.
Ads would be clearly labelled and positioned alongside responses, aiming to replace interruption-driven formats with context-aware brand suggestions delivered during moments of active user intent.
Industry executives describe conversational AI advertising as a shift from exposure to earned presence, in which brands must provide clarity or utility to justify inclusion.
Experts warn that trust remains fragile, as AI recommendations carry the weight of personal consultation, and undisclosed commercial influence could prompt rapid user disengagement instead of passive ad avoidance.
Regulators and marketers alike highlight risks linked to dark patterns, algorithmic framing and subtle manipulation within AI-mediated conversations.
As conversational systems begin to shape discovery and decision-making, media planning is expected to shift toward intent-led engagement, authority-building, and transparency, reshaping digital advertising economics beyond search rankings and impression-based buying.
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New safeguards are being introduced as ChatGPT uses age prediction to identify accounts that may belong to under-18s. Extra protections limit exposure to harmful content while still allowing adults full access.
The age prediction model analyses behavioural and account-level signals, including usage patterns, activity times, account age, and stated age information. OpenAI says these indicators help estimate whether an account belongs to a minor, enabling the platform to apply age-appropriate safeguards.
When an account is flagged as potentially under 18, ChatGPT limits access to graphic violence, sexual role play, viral challenges, self-harm, and unhealthy body image content. The safeguards reflect research on teen development, including differences in risk perception and impulse control.
ChatGPT users who are incorrectly classified can restore full access by confirming their age through a selfie check using Persona, a secure identity verification service. Account holders can review safeguards and begin the verification process at any time via the settings menu.
Parental controls allow further customisation, including quiet hours, feature restrictions, and notifications for signs of distress. OpenAI says the system will continue to evolve, with EU-specific deployment planned in the coming weeks to meet regional regulatory requirements.
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The Gates Foundation and OpenAI have launched a joint healthcare initiative, Horizon1000, to expand the use of AI across primary care systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. The partnership includes a $50 million commitment in funding, technology, and technical support to equip 1,000 clinics with AI tools by 2028.
Horizon1000’s Operations will begin in Rwanda, where local authorities will work with the two organisations to deploy AI systems in frontline healthcare settings. The initiative reflects the Foundation’s long-standing aim to ensure that new technologies reach lower-income regions without long delays.
Bill Gates said the project responds to a critical shortage of healthcare workers, which threatens to undermine decades of progress in global health. Sub-Saharan Africa currently faces a shortfall of nearly six million medical professionals, limiting the capacity of overstretched clinics to deliver consistent care.
Low-quality healthcare contributes to between six and eight million deaths annually in low- and middle-income countries, according to the World Health Organization. Rwanda, the first pilot country, has only one healthcare worker per 1,000 people, far below the WHO’s recommended level.
AI tools under Horizon1000 are intended to support, rather than replace, health workers by assisting with clinical guidance, administration, and patient interactions. The Gates Foundation said it will continue working with regional governments and innovators to scale the programme.
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ServiceNow has announced a multi-year agreement positioning OpenAI as a preferred intelligence capability across its enterprise platform, extending access to frontier AI models for organisations running tens of billions of workflows each year.
The partnership reflects a broader shift towards operational AI embedded directly within business systems instead of experimental deployments.
By integrating OpenAI models such as GPT-5.2 into the ServiceNow AI Platform, enterprises can embed reasoning and automation into secure workflows spanning IT, finance, human resources, and customer operations.
AI tools are designed to analyse context, recommend actions, and execute tasks within existing governance frameworks instead of functioning as standalone assistants.
Executives from both companies emphasised that the collaboration aims to deliver measurable outcomes at scale.
ServiceNow highlighted its role in coordinating complex enterprise environments, while OpenAI stressed the importance of deploying agentic AI capable of handling work end to end within permissioned infrastructures.
Looking ahead, the partnership plans to expand towards multimodal and voice-based interactions, enabling employees to communicate with AI systems through speech, text, and visual inputs.
The initiative strengthens OpenAI’s enterprise footprint while reinforcing ServiceNow’s ambition to act as a central control layer for AI-driven business operations.
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The moment many have anticipated with interest or concern has arrived. On 16 January, OpenAI announced the global rollout of its low-cost subscription tier, ChatGPT Go, in all countries where the model is supported. After debuting in India in August 2025 and expanding to Singapore the following month, the USD 8-per-month tier marks OpenAI’s most direct attempt yet to broaden paid access while maintaining assurances that advertising will not be embedded into ChatGPT’s prompts.
The move has been widely interpreted as a turning point in the way AI models are monetised. To date, most major AI providers have relied on a combination of external investment, strategic partnerships, and subscription offerings to sustain rapid development. Expectations of transformative breakthroughs and exponential growth have underpinned investor confidence, reinforcing what has come to be described as the AI boom.
Against this backdrop, OpenAI’s long-standing reluctance to embrace advertising takes on renewed significance. As recently as October 2024, chief executive Sam Altman described ads as a ‘last resort’ for the company’s business model. Does that position (still) reflect Altman’s confidence in alternative revenue streams, and is OpenAI simply the first company to bite the ad revenue bullet before other AI ventures have mustered the courage to do so?
ChatGPT, ads, and the integrity of AI responses
Regardless of one’s personal feelings about ad-based revenue, the facts about its essentiality are irrefutable. According to Statista’s Market Insights research, the worldwide advertising market has surpassed USD 1 trillion in annual revenue. With such figures in mind, it seems like a no-brainer to integrate ads whenever and wherever possible.
Furthermore, relying solely on substantial but irregular cash injections is not a reliable way to keep the lights on for a USD 500 billion company, especially in the wake of the RAM crisis. As much as the average consumer would prefer to use digital services without ads, coming up with an alternative and well-grounded revenue stream is tantamount to financial alchemy. Advertising remains one of the few monetisation models capable of sustaining large-scale platforms without significantly raising user costs.
For ChatGPT users, however, the concern centres less on the mere presence of ads and more on how advertising incentives could reshape data use, profiling practices, and the handling of conversational inputs. OpenAI has pleaded with its users to ‘trust that ChatGPT’s responses are driven by what’s objectively useful, never by advertising’. Altman’s company has also guaranteed that user data and conversations will remain protected and will never be sold to advertisers.
Such bold statements are never given lightly, meaning Altman fully stands behind his company’s words and is prepared to face repercussions should he break his promises. Since OpenAI is privately held, shifts in investor confidence following the announcement are not visible through public market signals, unlike at publicly listed technology firms. User count remains the most reliable metric for observing how ChatGPT is perceived by its target audience.
Competitive pressure behind ads in ChatGPT
Introducing ads to ChatGPT would be more than a simple change to how OpenAI makes money. Advertising can influence how the model responds to users, even if ads are not shown directly within the answers. Business pressure can still shape how information is presented through prompts. For example, certain products or services could be described more positively than others, without clearly appearing as advertisements or endorsements.
Recommendations raise particular concern. Many users turn to ChatGPT for advice or comparisons before making important purchases. If advertising becomes part of the model’s business, it may become harder for users to tell whether a suggestion is neutral or influenced by commercial interests. Transparency is also an issue, as the influence is much harder to spot in a chat interface than on websites that clearly label ads with banners or sponsored tags.
While these concerns are valid, competition remains the main force shaping decisions across the AI industry. No major company wants its model to fall behind rivals such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or other leading systems. Nearly all of these firms have faced public criticism or controversy at some point, forcing them to adjust their strategies and work to rebuild user trust.
The risk of public backlash has so far made companies cautious about introducing advertising. Still, this hesitation is unlikely to last forever. By moving first, OpenAI absorbs most of the initial criticism, while competitors get to stand back, watch how users respond, and adjust their plans accordingly. If advertising proves successful, others are likely to follow, drawing on OpenAI’s experience without bearing the brunt of the growing pains. To quote Arliss Howard’s character in Moneyball: ‘The first guy through the wall always gets bloody’.
ChatGPT advertising and governance challenges
Following the launch of ChatGPT Go, lawmakers and regulators may need to reconsider how existing legal safeguards apply to ad-supported LLMs. Most advertising rules are designed for websites, apps, and social media feeds, rather than systems that generate natural-language responses and present them as neutral or authoritative guidance.
The key question is: which rules should apply? Advertising in chatbots may not resemble traditional ads, muddying the waters for regulation under digital advertising rules, AI governance frameworks, or both. The uncertainty matters largely because different rules come with varying disclosure, transparency, and accountability requirements.
Disclosure presents a further challenge for regulators. On traditional websites, sponsored content is usually labelled and visually separated from editorial material. In an LLM interface such as ChatGPT, however, any commercial influence may appear in the flow of an answer itself. This makes it harder for users to distinguish content shaped by commercial considerations from neutral responses.
In the European Union, this raises questions about how existing regulatory frameworks apply. Advertising in conversational AI may intersect with rules on transparency, manipulation, and user protection under current digital and AI legislation, including the AI Act, the Digital Services Act, and the Digital Markets Act. Clarifying how these frameworks operate in practice will be important as conversational AI systems continue to evolve.
ChatGPT ads and data governance
In the context of ChatGPT, conversational interactions can be more detailed than clicks or browsing history. Prompts may include personal, professional, or sensitive information, which requires careful handling when introducing advertising models. Even without personalised targeting, conversational data still requires clear boundaries. As AI systems scale, maintaining user trust will depend on transparent data practices and strong privacy safeguards.
Then, there’s data retention. Advertising incentives can increase pressure to store conversations for longer periods or to find new ways to extract value from them. For users, this raises concerns about how their data is handled, who has access to it, and how securely it is protected. Even if OpenAI initially avoids personalised advertising, the lingering allure will remain a central issue in the discussion about advertising in ChatGPT, not a secondary one.
Clear policies around data use and retention will therefore play a central role in shaping how advertising is introduced. Limits on how long conversations are stored, how data is separated from advertising systems, and how access is controlled can help reduce user uncertainty. Transparency around these practices will be important in maintaining confidence as the platform evolves.
Simultaneously, regulatory expectations and public scrutiny are likely to influence how far advertising models develop. As ChatGPT becomes more widely used across personal, professional, and institutional settings, decisions around data handling will carry broader implications. How OpenAI balances commercial sustainability with privacy and trust may ultimately shape wider norms for advertising in conversational AI.
How ChatGPT ads could reshape the AI ecosystem
We have touched on the potential drawbacks of AI models adopting an ad-revenue model, but what about the benefits? If ChatGPT successfully integrates advertising, it could set an important precedent for the broader industry. As the provider of one of the most widely used general-purpose AI systems, OpenAI’s decisions are closely watched by competitors, policymakers, and investors.
One likely effect would be the gradual normalisation of ad-funded AI assistants. If advertising proves to be a stable revenue source without triggering significant backlash, other providers may view it as a practical path to sustainability. Over time, this could shift user expectations, making advertising a standard feature rather than an exception in conversational AI tools.
Advertising may also intensify competitive pressure on open, academic, or non-profit AI models. Such systems often operate with more limited funding and may struggle to match the resources of ad-supported platforms such as ChatGPT. As a result, the gap between large commercial providers and alternative models could widen, especially in areas such as infrastructure, model performance, and distribution.
Taken together, these dynamics could strengthen the role of major AI providers as gatekeepers. Beyond controlling access to technology, they may increasingly influence which products, services, or ideas gain visibility through AI-mediated interactions. Such a concentration of influence would not be unique to AI, but it raises familiar questions about competition, diversity, and power in digital information ecosystems.
ChatGPT advertising and evolving governance frameworks
Advertising in ChatGPT is not simply a business decision. It highlights a broader shift in the way knowledge, economic incentives, and large-scale AI systems interact. As conversational AI becomes more embedded in everyday life, these developments offer an opportunity to rethink how digital services can remain both accessible and sustainable.
For policymakers and governance bodies, the focus is less on whether advertising appears and more on how it is implemented. Clear rules around transparency, accountability, and user protection can help ensure that conversational AI evolves in ways that support trust, choice, and fair competition, while allowing innovation to continue.
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