OpenAI Expands its Presence with New Partnerships and Office Openings

OpenAI partners with L'Oréal to bolster AI capabilities and Visa for AI-driven payments. The company also expands its European footprint with a new office in Madrid, as they explore an initial public offering in the US.

OpenAI announced a cluster of expansion moves in mid-June 2026, combining new enterprise partnerships with geographic growth. At the VivaTech conference in Paris, L'Oréal unveiled a collaboration with OpenAI that includes listing thousands of U.S. product detail pages inside ChatGPT, joining OpenAI's global ChatGPT advertising pilot (covering SkinCeuticals, CeraVe, and Garnier), and launching a Makeup Virtual Try-On feature inside ChatGPT this summer with Maybelline New York. Separately, OpenAI and V Visa announced a strategic collaboration to support secure payments inside agentic commerce experiences, positioning OpenAI's AI agents to initiate and complete financial transactions on behalf of users.

On the geographic front, OpenAI opened its first office in Madrid, deepening its footprint in Spain where weekly active ChatGPT users have grown more than 40% year-over-year, placing Spain among the top five European markets. The Madrid office is expected to accelerate enterprise sales and talent acquisition across southern Europe, a region where AI regulatory frameworks are still forming under the EU AI Act.

Overlapping these moves, OpenAI confidentially filed a draft S-1 with the SEC for a potential U.S. IPO, though the company has not confirmed a launch date or pricing range. The L'Oréal and Visa deals signal a push to broaden revenue streams beyond subscriptions ahead of any public listing. Key risks include regulatory scrutiny under EU AI rules, competitive pressure from GOOGL Google and MSFT Microsoft, and investor expectations around profitability that remain unresolved.