Ads Come To ChatGPT

Welcome to the Tech Brew ride home from Monday, 01/19/2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, ads are finally coming to chat GPT, why everyone online can't stop talking about going on clodbenders, Elon's case against OpenAI moves forward again, the Thinking Machine saga royals on again, and the big movie about AI everyone is apparently watching. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. There's a lot of chatter about using AI agents right now, but no one seems to be talking about how these agents aren't always perfect. Sometimes they delete the wrong files or make changes you didn't authorize and when that happens, you're left to clean up the mess. That is unless you're using Rubrik Agent Cloud. It's the only platform that allows you to monitor, govern and rewind AI agent actions. And if your business relies on AI agents, you need those abilities. On a singular platform, it helps you unleash more agents faster while mitigating risk. If you're running AI agents and wanna sleep better at night, Rubrik is worth checking out. Right now, my listeners get exclusive early access to the platform. Head to rubrik.com. That's rubrik.com. It is official. OpenAI plans to test ads below ChatGPT replies for users of the free and go tiers in The US. A source says OpenAI expects to make in the low billions of dollars from ads in 2026 alone. Quoting the Feet, the San Francisco headquartered company announced on Friday that it would begin testing adverts on its free chatbot and cheapest paid offering. The ads will appear at the bottom of chat GPT answers in the coming weeks. OpenAI said the marketing messages will be clearly labeled and will appear if relevant to the query. The company, led by chief executive Sam Altman, is exploring new revenue streams that could help fund spending commitments of roughly $1,400,000,000,000 on computing resources over the next decade. OpenAI anticipates it will make low billions of dollars from advertising in 2026 and more each year thereafter according to a person close to the company. In recent months, OpenAI has been enhancing the ability of ChatGPT to store information from conversations that can later be retrieved to provide more personalized responses. The focus on memories provides a powerful tranche of preferences which the company anticipates drawing on to tailor hyper personalized advertising according to the person close to OpenAI. The company said personalization could be turned off and memories deleted. Earlier this week, Google launched personalized advertising into its AI mode in its search engine, which delivers bespoke discounts to users shopping on the platform. OpenAI is also working on other alternative business lines, including a suite of AI hardware devices, developing bespoke products for governments and businesses, and new shopping tools. It is also in early talks with investors regarding a new funding round that could raise about $80,000,000,000 according to people familiar with the deal, end quote. A slightly different angle now from Benzinga, which I'm sure …