ChatGPT Ads lands in 31 European markets

OpenAI is taking its ad experiment global — six months after piloting sponsored placements in the US, ChatGPT Ads rolls out next week across 31 European countries including Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and the Nordics. It's the largest single expansion yet for a monetization strategy that could reshape how AI companies fund free-tier access.

ChatGPT Ads expands to 31 European markets. Starting next week, advertisers in Europe will be able to reach ChatGPT users as they explore, compare, and make decisions — OpenAI's pitch is that people come to ChatGPT with intent, not just keywords. Ads will initially be managed through OpenAI's Ads Solutions team and agency partners, with self-service access through Ads Manager arriving later this summer. As in the US, ads appear only to Free and Go plan users; Plus, Pro, and Enterprise subscribers remain ad-free. OpenAI says conversations stay private from advertisers, customer data is never sold, and ads are clearly labeled and separate from ChatGPT's answers.

The expansion also comes with platform upgrades: OpenAI has added conversion-optimized bidding beyond the original CPM and CPC models, introduced geo-targeting and custom audiences, and built out measurement tools including the OpenAI Pixel and a Conversions API for tracking business outcomes. Tens of thousands of marketers have already advertised on ChatGPT in the US and the eight other markets added since the February pilot. The question now is whether European users — and regulators — will接受 the idea of ads inside an AI assistant they trust for answers. OpenAI frames it as democratizing access: ad revenue supports free and low-cost tiers. But the company is still early in building out formats and optimization tools, and the real test will be whether advertisers see ChatGPT as a genuine decision-making channel or just another screen to buy impressions on.

Shengshu Tech, the Vidu video-generation unicorn, reportedly weighs a Hong Kong IPO. Beijing-based Shengshu Tech — the Tsinghua-born startup behind the Vidu video generation model — is considering a Hong Kong IPO that could raise more than $500 million, according to Bloomberg. The company has enlisted CICC and CITIC Securities as underwriters, with a potential listing as early as next year. Founded in 2023 by Tsinghua professor Zhu Jun and incubated by RealAI, Ant Group, and BV Baidu Ventures, Shengshu has raised nearly 6 billion yuan in the first half of 2026 alone, including a $500 million B+ round in July that valued the company at over $2 billion. Its core product, Vidu, is built on the U-ViT architecture the team pioneered in 2022, and its latest Vidu Q3 model ranked second on the Artificial Analysis video generation benchmark behind Grok-Imagine-Video. Beyond video, Shengshu is also pushing into embodied AI with Motubrain, a general-purpose robot brain model — a sign that Chinese AI startups are building full-stack plays across digital and physical worlds. The IPO talk comes as peers like PixVerse and Kuaishou's Kling AI also eye Hong Kong listings, signaling that the video generation wave is entering its capital markets chapter.

What to watch: whether OpenAI's ad model actually drives measurable conversions in Europe, or becomes another programmatic inventory play — and whether Shengshu's IPO timeline holds as competition from Kling and PixVerse intensifies.

Should AI companies be allowed to run ads inside tools people rely on for truthful answers? Tell us in the comments.

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Akhetonics says its all-optical CPU reaches a customer in 2026

The Week in AI — October 5–11, 2026

Drone strike shuts a third Yandex data center, taking YandexGPT offline

Agent teams cost up to 5x more, barely score higher