OpenAI is expanding advertising on ChatGPT to 26 additional countries, taking the total number of markets to 89, as the frontier AI lab seeks to diversify revenue ahead of a potential initial public offering (IPO).
The expansion, announced on Wednesday, comes as OpenAI builds its advertising business alongside efforts to make its AI models more accessible to corporate customers through major cloud computing platforms.
The ChatGPT-parent said in August that its advertising business had reached an annualised revenue run rate of USD 1 billion.
OpenAI began testing ads on ChatGPT in the United States earlier this year, and more than 100,000 advertisers have since run campaigns on the platform.
The latest rollout adds 14 Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru, following earlier launches in Mexico and Brazil. Advertising is also being introduced across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, with new markets including Nigeria, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Advertisers can access the expanded markets through technology partners or use the self-service Ads Manager platform.
The international expansion marks another step in OpenAI’s efforts to monetise ChatGPT’s large user base beyond paid subscriptions and enterprise services.
Under its current advertising model, ads appear only on ChatGPT’s Free and Go plans. The company said its Plus, Pro and Enterprise subscriptions would remain ad-free.
OpenAI has also been developing additional advertising products. In September, it introduced AI-powered tools for advertisers and began testing business-sponsored agents with a select group of US advertisers.
OpenAI’s strategic expansion comes as AI companies face pressure to generate revenue capable of supporting the substantial costs of developing and operating advanced models.
Alongside its advertising push, OpenAI is expanding its distribution network through a partnership with Google Cloud.
The companies said on Wednesday that OpenAI’s advanced AI models and Codex coding agent would become available through Google Cloud in the coming weeks.
The agreement will allow customers to access OpenAI models through Google Cloud’s Model Garden and purchase them through Google Cloud Marketplace.
Customers will also be able to use existing cloud spending commitments for these purchases, potentially making it easier for businesses to adopt OpenAI’s technology within their existing IT budgets.
The arrangement is particularly relevant to regulated industries, where companies need strict controls over data access, governance and infrastructure.
Google Cloud customers will be able to use the platform’s existing security and data management capabilities to build AI-powered workflows, including systems that can perform multistep tasks with limited human intervention.
For OpenAI, the partnership opens another route to enterprise customers that already rely on Google’s cloud infrastructure.
Google is also one of the major cloud providers to distribute OpenAI models, following the expansion of the company’s relationships with Amazon Web Services and the end of its exclusive distribution arrangement with Microsoft in April.
While Google and OpenAI compete in AI products and other areas, both also have shared commercial incentives to make their technologies available through widely used cloud platforms.
For Google Cloud, offering OpenAI models strengthens its strategy of giving developers access to a broad selection of third-party AI systems alongside Google’s own models.
Cloud platforms are becoming important commercial channels for advanced AI developers because they provide established enterprise relationships, computing infrastructure and billing systems.
Providers typically earn revenue from sales made through their marketplaces.
The financial importance of these partnerships is already evident elsewhere in the industry.
Dario Amodei-led Anthropic, an OpenAI competitor backed by Amazon and Google, generated 47% of its 2025 revenue through the two companies’ cloud platforms, according to its IPO filing reviewed by Reuters.