As OpenAI prepares to complete a titanic fundraising of 100 billion dollars, Sam Altman reassures his troops: the machine is restarted. But this reconquest in the face of competition has a price: the controversial arrival of advertising on ChatGPT officially begins today.
A few months ago, the atmosphere was not festive at the creator of ChatGPT. Last December, the firm even declared a “ code rouge » internally, putting several projects on hold to refocus on the essential in the face of the rise of Google and especially from Anthropic. Today, the tone has radically changed. In a Slack message sent to his employees last Friday, Sam Altman welcomed a newfound dynamic: ChatGPT returned to monthly growth above 10%.
The figures are dizzying: 800 million people now use chatbots every week. This resurgence comes at the right time, because behind the scenes, financial directors are busy finalizing a historic financing round. We are talking here abouta potential fundraising of 100 billion dollars. The financial package would be done in two stages: a first tranche involving Microsoft, Nvidia and potentially Amazon (up to 50 billion), followed by a second wave led by SoftBank (around 30 billion).
Codex vs Claude: the war of code and spades at the Super Bowl
If overall growth resumes, it is especially in the area of code that the battle rages. Altman describes the progression as “ Codex », their product dedicated to developers, of “ insane “. In just one week, its usage jumped by 50%driven by the recent launch of model GPT-5.3-Codex and a Mac application allowing centralized management of several AI agents. Internally, graphs are already circulating to show that Codex is eating into the market share of Claude Code, the direct rival designed by Anthropic.
But this rivalry is not limited to lines of code; it now spreads across the public square. Anthropic had the luxury of broadcasting advertisements during the Super Bowl to mock OpenAI’s decision to integrate advertising into its tool. An attack that did not please Sam Altman at all, who described these spots as “ deceptive » et « dishonest » on X.
Advertising arrives today
Despite the criticism, OpenAI is moving forward. The display of advertisements on ChatGPT officially begins this Monday, February 9. If you are a free user or “ Go », expect to see ads appear at the bottom of chatbot responses. The promise of OpenAI? They will be clearly labeled, linked to your query, and most importantly, they will not influence the content generated by the AI. For paying subscribers, the experience will remain (for now) ad-free.
The stated objective is that advertising will ultimately represent less than half of the company’s revenues. In the meantime, Sam Altman is keeping one last card up his sleeve to maintain the hype: a “ Updated Chat template » is due to launch later this week.
date: 2026-02-09 22:19:00