Despite a surge in annualized revenue, OpenAI is accelerating its shift toward commercialization under the pressure of high computing power costs and cash burn, introducing advertising models and extensively recruiting $Meta Platforms (META.US)$ former employees. This once non-profit organization now appears to be inevitably gravitating toward the operational logic of social media giants.

According to disclosures by Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar last week, OpenAI’s annualized revenue for 2025 has surpassed $20 billion, a significant increase from $6 billion in 2024. However, the company burned approximately $8 billion in cash during 2025. To bridge the funding gap, OpenAI announced last week that it would begin displaying advertisements to some U.S. users within ChatGPT, marking a departure from its previous resistance to an advertising model.

This strategic pivot is accompanied by notable changes in personnel composition. Data shows that OpenAI is aggressively hiring employees from Meta, raising market concerns that ChatGPT might emulate Facebook’s focus on maximizing user engagement and time spent. Additionally, according to Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s policy director, the company is on track to launch its first hardware device in the second half of 2026, further expanding its commercial footprint.

Investors are optimistic about OpenAI diversifying its revenue through advertising and competing with Google. However, analysts warn that the introduction of an advertising model could reshape the incentive structures of artificial intelligence platforms. As the company transitions from its non-profit origins to a commercially driven approach, the market is closely watching whether it might sacrifice user privacy or leverage algorithms to cultivate user habits in pursuit of advertising revenue.

Revenue Anxiety and the ‘Last Resort’

Bloomberg commentary noted that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had described display advertising as the company’s ‘last resort’ in 2024. However, after burning approximately $8 billion in cash during 2025, this moment has clearly arrived.

Although CFO Sarah Friar highlighted that revenue growth is closely tied to the expansion of computing capabilities, the enormous expenditures associated with building computational infrastructure have forced the company to seek new sources of funding.

For OpenAI, entering online advertising—one of the most successful business models in history—represents a rational choice to alleviate financial pressures.

By displaying banner ads in the free version of ChatGPT and certain paid tiers (for example, showing hot sauce advertisements when users inquire about Mexican cuisine), OpenAI aims to monetize without directly interfering with conversational content. However, the rapidity of this strategic shift underscores the financial urgency the company faces.

Silicon Valley ‘Poaching’ and the Tendency Toward ‘Metafication’

OpenAI’s talent recruitment strategy reveals its potential operational direction. According to data from The Information, as of last October, approximately 630 former Meta employees were working at OpenAI, accounting for 20% of its total workforce of about 3,000 employees.

As a social media giant, Meta has industry-defining experience in optimizing algorithms to enhance user engagement and successfully utilized AI-driven modeling to maintain the efficiency of its advertising business after Apple revised its privacy policies.

Bloomberg notes that OpenAI’s significant effort to recruit specialized talent from Meta suggests it may be learning how to enhance commercial value through algorithm optimization. Despite OpenAI’s commitment not to sell user personal data, with the support of former Meta employees, the market has reason to speculate that OpenAI will adopt similar advanced modeling techniques for precise ad targeting.

Privacy Commitment and Algorithmic Black Box

OpenAI has publicly committed not to ‘optimize ChatGPT’s user session duration,’ meaning it will not deliberately induce users to spend more time on the application viewing advertisements.

However, this commitment appears fragile and difficult to regulate in the face of an ad-centric business model. Experience from social media shows that engagement is highly positively correlated with revenue—Meta once achieved a 22% jump in ad revenue in the second quarter of 2025, driven by only an 8% increase in user engagement.

Analysts believe that given the opaque nature of OpenAI’s model operations, external researchers will find it difficult to detect whether the company is fine-tuning its models to increase user stickiness. Large language models inherently tend to use anthropomorphic language like ‘I’m listening’ or flatter users; slight adjustments to these characteristics to extend user interaction times would be hard for outsiders to notice but could significantly boost the value of ad inventory.

The Irresistible Gravity

Currently, ChatGPT boasts a massive traffic pool. According to OpenAI’s latest data, 900 million people interact with the bot weekly, with average session durations of 15 to 20 minutes, and users return multiple times daily, making it highly attractive to advertisers.

Bloomberg analysis points out that as financial pressures mount, Altman will find it hard to resist the gravitational pull of the advertising model, namely avoiding the use of addictive mechanisms driving today’s mobile games and social media platforms.

History shows that advertising tends to reshape internet platforms. OpenAI is optimizing for user groups unable to afford the $20 monthly subscription fee, including many young people. This could lead to ChatGPT evolving from a simple auxiliary tool into a product designed to cultivate user habits, eventually becoming increasingly similar to Facebook in its commercialization journey.

Editor/Rice