[8/31 15:00] OpenAI says ChatGPT Ads hit a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in under 200 days, opens self-serve buying in India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa / Nvidia invests $3.5 billion in MediaTek convertible bonds; MediaTek adopts NVLink Fusion to bring custom XPUs into Nvidia rack-scale AI factories

AI News Flash for August 31, 2026 at 15:00 UTC. Topics: 1. OpenAI says ChatGPT Ads hit a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate in under 200 days, opens self-serve buying in India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa https://digiday.com/media-buying/openais-chatgpt-ads-business-hits-1-billion-run-rate-as-europe-gets-self-serve-access/ 2. Nvidia invests $3.5 billion in MediaTek convertible bonds; MediaTek adopts NVLink Fusion to bring custom XPUs into Nvidia rack-scale AI factories https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/data-center-hardware/nvidia-mediatek-bring-custom-chips-to-ai-racks 3. LEAP 2026 opens in Riyadh and HUMAIN unveils a wave of deals: 100MW with DataVolt in NEOM, AMD-Cisco infrastructure live, Applied Intuition autonomous trucks, AWS region in December, Together AI 250MW, Adobe $4bn https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/technology/4705922/american-ai-startup-saudi-arabia-us-data-center-backlash/ 4. European Commission designates ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine under the Digital Services Act, the first AI chatbot, alongside Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/08/31/eu-places-chatgpt-reddit-and-roblox-under-strictest-digital-safety-rules 5. Oilfield services giant SLB to acquire data center cooling firm Kelvion for about $3.4 billion in cash plus $700 million of debt, closing in the first half of 2027 https://www.worldoil.com/news/2026/8/31/slb-to-acquire-kelvion-for-3-4-billion-in-data-center-infrastructure-expansion/