OpenAI expands advertising business, poaches talent from Meta.

This year, OpenAI and Anthropic have continuously rolled out new models and tools to compete for developers, and the advertising business was once only a secondary business, but the situation has now changed. In recent months, OpenAI has launched multiple new products and tools to attract advertisers, while also lowering ad pricing. Data shows that this move has attracted a large number of new advertising clients, and the company is also hiring on a large scale. Data from employee information tracking platform Crustdata shows that of OpenAI's approximately 140 advertising-related employees, nearly half joined between July and September, with talent mainly coming from Meta. The head of the advertising business, Dave Dugan, previously worked at Meta for 12 years. Large-scale hiring combined with the departure of some executives has driven many internal changes. Two people familiar with the matter said that since the advertising business launched in February, the OpenAI advertising team has undergone seven reorganizations. Although advertising revenue has grown, OpenAI will most likely fail to meet the ambitious targets it presented to investors at the beginning of the year. At the time, the company estimated that full-year 2026 advertising revenue would reach $2.4 billion.