OpenAI reportedly made a loss of $5B in 2024. By 2024's end they had ~300M WAUs, most of them free and not monetized in any way whatsoever.

To be profitable, they'd need to monetize those free users for an average of $17/year or $1.5/month.

Do you realize how low that is ? Yes, ads even implemented in an uninspiring fashion would more than cover that. With some thought into it ? Well, You don't need to be a genius to see the potential of directly weaving paid recommendations naturally into conversations when appropriate.