OpenAI

OpenAI’s advertising revenue reaches $1 billion run rate before its IPO

OpenAI’s advertising revenue has reached a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate, the company said this week. That figure takes the money coming in now and stretches it across a full year, so it shows the pace of income rather than cash already banked. The number stands out because the ad business is only about 200 days old. For a product that young, the speed says something about how quickly advertisers are testing the platform.

What the milestone means

OpenAI calls the result proof of a “diversified business model,” meaning income from more than one source. The company already earns from enterprise deals, consumer subscriptions, and usage-based programming interfaces, the tools that let outside software connect to its systems. Advertising now sits beside those streams. For context, the ad product passed $100 million on the same measure within weeks of its launch, so the climb has been fast. ChatGPT ads appear for people on the free tier and the lower-cost Go plan, and that free tier makes up most of the roughly 1 billion weekly users. Such reach gives the business room to grow. OpenAI shared the update as it widens the product into new regions.

OpenAI’s advertising revenue and the road to an IPO

Timing here is not random. OpenAI is preparing for a public listing, and ahead of the OpenAI IPO, the company faces pressure to defend a high price. The $852 billion OpenAI valuation is the figure investors have placed on the business, and a second or third income stream makes it easier to justify. This listing could rank among the biggest tech debuts in years, which raises the bar for the numbers OpenAI shows. OpenAI’s advertising revenue gives the company a growth story beyond subscriptions, which is what public investors tend to reward.

How ChatGPT ads work

OpenAI started testing ads inside ChatGPT in the United States in February. The move was expected and also drew criticism. Digital advertising has long paid the bills for Google and Meta, so the direction felt familiar, yet a chatbot carrying ads was new. The ads run beneath answers rather than inside them, and each carries a clear sponsored label. OpenAI says the ads do not change ChatGPT’s replies, and advertisers cannot see private conversations. The step also marked a change of heart at the top. Sam Altman, the company’s chief executive, had once called advertising a last resort and worried that users might trust a chatbot less if it sold products. The company now says it does not show ads to people it believes are under 18. OpenAI’s advertising revenue rests on that trust, since a user who doubts the answers has little reason to stay.

Not everyone welcomed the shift. Anthropic, OpenAI’s main competitor, mocked the ad push and built its first Super Bowl campaign around one pitch: a chatbot without ads. Meanwhile, the wider industry is moving the same way. Google is folding ads into its AI answers, and other large platforms are testing similar ideas. That competition raises the stakes, because OpenAI is chasing budgets Google and Meta already control. How much of that money shifts to chatbots is far from settled.

Where OpenAI’s advertising revenue goes next

ChatGPT ads run in more than 40 countries today. OpenAI is widening self-service buying through a system called ChatGPT Ads Manager, which lets businesses run their own campaigns without a sales rep, across India, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The company says its coming expansion will reach more markets and add new ad formats, buying options, and better measurement. OpenAI also plans to test more native ways for businesses to reach people inside ChatGPT. Whether OpenAI’s advertising revenue can climb from a $1 billion run rate toward the much larger targets the company has floated will depend on how many advertisers stay once the novelty fades.

By Leila Al-Khatib
4 min read

Syria

Syria’s Global Financial System Return Begins With a Visa Card

Syria’s global financial system return took visible shape this week, and it happened over a cup of coffee. President Ahmed Al-Sharaa used a Visa card to pay a Damascus vendor in a video released early Thursday, a small transaction carrying outsized symbolism for a country locked out of global banking networks for nearly five decades.

Al-Sharaa made the payment sitting beside Safwat Raslan, governor of Syria’s central bank. Raslan posted the footage on X. He described watching the president complete the country’s first Visa card payment in the capital as a feeling difficult to put into words. He noted it came one day after Syria’s removal from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation that had shaped the country’s economic isolation since 1979.

أن نشهد هذه اللحظة مع فخامة السيد الرئيس أحمد الشرع @AH_AlSharaa وأن تتم أول عملية دفع باستخدام ببطاقة فيزا @Visa في قلب دمشق في اليوم التالي لرفع اسم سوريا من قائمة الدول الراعية للإرهاب، هو بالنسبة لي شعور يصعب اختصاره بالكلمات
بداية جديدة نحمل فيها الكثير من الأمل و المسؤولية pic.twitter.com/xbH7Kge9Re

— Safwat Raslan (صفوت رسلان) (@SafwatRaslan) August 26, 2026

A Decades-Old Label Comes Off

The United States removed Syria from its state sponsors of terrorism list on Monday, a step Damascus had pushed for since the fall of the Assad government. The change took effect after a 45-day congressional review period that began when President Donald Trump formally notified Congress in July of his intention to rescind the designation.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio authorized the formal rescission once that review period ended, and also delisted Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the group Al-Sharaa once led, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. Rubio framed the decision as recognition of steps Damascus had taken over the past year, saying the government of Syria had joined the global coalition against ISIS and conducted operations against terror networks including ISIS, al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Iran-aligned groups. He called the move another historic step by President Trump to give the Syrian people a path to prosperity.

Rebels led by Al-Sharaa overthrew longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December 2024, ending a civil war that had run for more than a decade. The terrorism designation had blocked most forms of American trade, investment, and financial contact with Syria for that entire period and long before it.

What the Designation Removal Unlocks

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the move would help foster additional investment in Syria to promote political and economic stability, adding that it followed through on a promise Trump made to deliver sanctions relief to the country. Treasury was careful to draw a line around the scope of the change. The department stressed that removing the restrictions did not change its posture on countering global terrorism or its commitment to hold bad actors in Syria accountable.

The timing lines up with a broader push already underway. In May, the Central Bank of Syria authorized local banks and electronic payment companies to work directly with international payment providers such as Visa and Mastercard, part of a plan to move the country past its reliance on cash. That decision followed a December 2025 roadmap agreement between the central bank and Visa focused on building a modern payment system. The coffee payment in Damascus put a face on work that had been building for months.

Raslan, who took over as central bank governor in May, has said publicly that Syria’s financial reforms only matter if people feel them in daily life. His remarks alongside the president echoed that theme. He described the terrorism list removal as returning Syria to its natural place in the global economic system, a framing that positions the Visa payment as proof of concept rather than a one-off gesture.

Reconstruction Money Still Has to Show Up

Syria’s global financial system return carries weight because the country needs outside capital badly. Syria’s banking industry held just $12 billion in assets as of November 2024, with state-owned banks holding 69 percent of that total. The World Bank has described those state lenders as likely distressed. Analysts covering the sector have warned that lifting sanctions does not automatically fix a banking system this weak, and that reconstruction financing depends on more than a delisting.

Lebanese, Jordanian, Bahraini, and Qatari banks that kept minimal operations running in Syria during the war are positioned to scale up activity as restrictions ease, with early focus expected on retail banking, cross-border payments, and remittances from Syrians living abroad. Gulf states including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar have already pledged multibillion-dollar investments tied to reconstruction.

Al-Sharaa addressed the terrorism list removal directly in a recorded statement, saying Syria was shaking off a dark stain and tearing away a painful chapter of its past to embark on a path of development, reconstruction, and rebuilding. The Visa payment gave that language a physical moment attached to it.

Why the Optics Matter

A single card payment does not rebuild a banking sector. But for a government trying to convince investors, banks, and ordinary Syrians that the country is open again, small public proofs carry real weight. Syria’s global financial system’s return will ultimately be measured in trade volumes, correspondent banking relationships, and IMF assessments, not video clips. Still, the choice to stage that first Visa transaction with the central bank governor sitting next to the president was deliberate. It told a story the government wanted told, at the exact moment the story became true.

The next test comes from institutions rather than optics. Syria’s government has the remainder of 2026 and 2027 to convert this moment into durable outcomes, including restored correspondent banking relationships and completed regulatory reviews. Whether Syria’s global financial system return holds depends on those steps landing on schedule.

By Leila Al-Khatib
5 min read

Emirates NBD

UAE’s First Transition Finance Framework by Emirates NBD Opens New Funding Route for Carbon-Heavy Industries

UAE’s first transition finance framework has arrived, and it changes how carbon-heavy companies in the country can access funding for their shift away from fossil-heavy operations. Emirates NBD built the framework specifically for corporate and institutional clients whose businesses cannot yet meet the strict criteria of green finance, but who are taking real, measurable steps to cut emissions.

Why this gap needed filling

Think of green finance as a club with a strict entry test. A solar farm gets in easily. A steel plant working to cut its carbon footprint does not, even if it is making genuine progress. That plant still needs capital to fund the changeover, and until now, the UAE market had no dedicated structure for financing it. UAE’s first transition finance framework fills that gap by defining what counts as credible transition activity, rather than requiring businesses to already be green.

The framework applies to high-emitting and hard-to-abate sectors: manufacturing, mining, power and energy, real estate, transport and storage, agriculture and information technology. These industries share a common problem. They are often complex, capital-intensive, or lack a commercially viable zero-carbon alternative right now. A cement producer cannot simply swap its kilns for clean equivalents overnight. Emirates NBD’s methodology gives lenders a consistent way to assess which projects in these sectors deserve transition funding, based on emissions reduction, energy efficiency gains, and adoption of cleaner technologies.

Built on international standards

Emirates NBD did not write this framework in isolation. It drew on the ICMA Climate Transition Finance Handbook, the ICMA Climate Transition Bond Guidelines 2025, and the Loan Market Association’s Guide to Transition Loan Finance 2025. That grounding matters for credibility. A framework built only on internal judgment invites skepticism from investors who want proof that “transition” labels mean something real, not a marketing gloss on business as usual.

To back that credibility, the bank commissioned DNV Assurance to deliver a second-party opinion on the framework. An outside assessor reviewing the methodology gives clients and investors a check beyond the bank’s own claims. Vijay Bains, Chief Sustainability Officer and Group Head of ESG at Emirates NBD, said the framework builds on the bank’s existing sustainable finance and sustainability-linked financing tools, and will help support the transition of the real economy across the UAE and the wider region.

Part of a larger target

UAE’s first transition finance framework does not stand alone. It sits inside Emirates NBD’s broader push to mobilize $30 billion in sustainable and transition finance by 2030. The bank said the new structure will help channel capital toward decarbonization, industrial transformation and long-term resilience projects, giving it another instrument alongside existing green and sustainability-linked products.

The initiative also connects to a bigger regional goal. Emirates NBD is supporting the UAE Banking Federation’s ambition to mobilize AED 1 trillion in sustainable finance by 2030. That figure covers the entire national banking sector, and frameworks like this one are the mechanism through which individual banks contribute their share.

What clients get from it

For a company in one of the covered sectors, the practical benefit is clarity. Before this framework, a business pursuing decarbonization had few consistent signals on which projects would qualify for transition financing versus standard corporate lending. Now, clients get defined criteria covering emissions reduction, energy efficiency upgrades, cleaner technology adoption and shifts toward lower-carbon business models. Investors benefit too, since a shared methodology makes it easier to compare transition claims across borrowers rather than evaluating each one from scratch.

The framework does not promise instant transformation of the region’s heaviest emitters. What it offers is a structured entry point, one that treats credible progress as fundable even when a business has not yet reached green status. For sectors that make up a large share of the UAE’s industrial base, that distinction could shape how quickly decarbonization investment actually moves.

By Leila Al-Khatib
4 min read

Leila Al-Khatib