OpenAI announced a series of ad tech partnerships and hiring moves over the past month. Here's what actually happened: the company is building the infrastructure to replace every vendor it just signed up.
The sequence tells you everything. On March 2, Criteo put out a press release announcing it was the "first advertising technology partner" in OpenAI's ChatGPT ad pilot. Days later, Digiday reported that OpenAI was hiring a monetization infrastructure engineer, engineering manager, product designer, senior manager for ad revenue accounting, and a trust and safety specialist dedicated to ads, all full-time, all in San Francisco, with compensation bands reaching $385,000. Then on March 23, Adweek reported that OpenAI had poached David Dugan, a decade-plus veteran of Meta's ads division, to serve as VP and head of global ads solutions.
You don't pay $385,000 for engineers and recruit Meta's ads leadership if you plan to let Criteo run the show.
The playbook everyone's pretending not to see
If this feels familiar, it should. Netflix partnered with Microsoft's ad platform in 2022 to launch its ad-supported tier, then spent the next three years building its own ad tech stack and pulling capabilities in-house. Walmart ran a similar play, leaning on DSP partnerships before consolidating its retail media infrastructure under Walmart Connect. The pattern is the same every time: partner to learn, hire to build, then cut the cord.
OpenAI is just doing it faster and being less coy about it. As Digiday noted, "companies don't build out an internal ads org, let alone pay up to $385,000 to do it, if they're planning to rely on outside vendors forever."
Meanwhile, Criteo's own press release called the ChatGPT integration "an exciting step forward in advancing advertising in an emerging AI experience." What Criteo didn't mention: the company is staring down a $75 million revenue headwind in 2026 after two major retail media clients reduced their scope, and its stock was trading near 52-week lows last month. Being OpenAI's first ad tech partner is the most compelling story Criteo can tell investors right now. The catch is that the better Criteo performs inside ChatGPT, the stronger the case OpenAI has for building that capability itself.
Follow the money
The numbers explain the urgency. OpenAI has topped $25 billion in annualized revenue as of late February, according to The Information. But approximately 95% of ChatGPT's 900 million-plus weekly active users don't pay for subscriptions. The company is expected to burn through roughly $15 billion in cash this year, up from $9 billion in 2025. Subscriptions alone will not close that gap.
