Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) poses for a group photo with AI company leaders, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (C) and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei (right), at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on February 19, 2026.
Ludovic Marin | AFP | Getty Images
OpenAI’s Sam Altman told CNBC that Chinese tech companies’ progress across the stack has been “remarkable,” citing “many areas” including AI.
Altman’s comments come as China races with the U.S. to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), an AI that rivals human capabilities, and deploy that technology throughout society.
China’s progress has been “amazingly fast,” he said. Altman added that while Chinese tech companies are close to the frontier in some areas, they lag behind in others.
According to deal aggregation platform Dealroom, OpenAI is working to develop revenue streams with the aim of providing a path to profitability for investors who have invested around $70 billion in the company. The company is closing on a $100 billion funding round, people told CNBC.
Advertising within ChatGPT is one of the avenues the company is exploring.
“I think there’s still some work to be done to figure out exactly which ad formats will be most effective,” Altman said, adding that plans are in the early stages.
“Personally, my favorite thing about tech advertising over the last few years has been the kind of Instagram-style ads where you discover new things that you might really like but you wouldn’t have known about otherwise,” he said. “I think there is a real opportunity to move in that direction with advertising on ChatGPT.”
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