New York, May 18, 2026, 18:02 EDT
Zeta Global Holdings Corp. shares rose 11.6% to finish Monday at $19.19 after CEO David Steinberg said the marketing-tech firm had “executed an agreement” with OpenAI to “help them run their advertising.” Zeta hit $19.44 during the session and barely moved after the close. StockAnalysis
Zeta keeps pushing its AI story this year. The company’s pitch: it’s more than a dashboard facelift—Zeta wants to grab a bigger piece of budget from firms looking to find and hold onto customers.
Zeta jumped in a routine NYSE session, with no holiday schedule in play. The next planned closure is Memorial Day, May 25, 2026, according to the exchange calendar. Zeta outperformed, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF slipped 0.1% and the Invesco QQQ ETF fell 0.4%.
Zeta shares moved after its May 14 news that it joined Snowflake’s Open Semantic Interchange, which looks to standardize business metrics between companies using open source. The project wants data and AI tools to see and use numbers in the same way. “AI is only as effective as the data it can trust,” Zeta CTO Christian Monberg said. Snowflake’s Josh Klahr said it aims for a “common foundation.” Business Wire
OpenAI already had a foot in the door. Back in January, Zeta said it struck a deal to use OpenAI’s models inside Athena, its enterprise-focused marketing AI agent. “This pushes AI beyond insight and into action,” said OpenAI Chief Commercial Officer Giancarlo Lionetti at the time. Zeta Global
Zeta’s latest results gave the stock a boost. The company posted first-quarter revenue of $396 million, a 50% jump from last year, and upped its 2026 revenue outlook to between $1.779 billion and $1.792 billion. Adjusted EBITDA guidance is now at $396.2 million to $398.4 million for the year. Adjusted EBITDA measures profit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, and cuts out some items.
Zeta CFO Chris Greiner pointed to the company’s run of 19 “beat-and-raise” quarters as “evidence of sustained demand.” CEO David Steinberg said Athena saw over seven times more agent interactions in its first week after launch. That’s been a number investors have focused on when weighing whether Athena can drive higher usage and spending. Business Wire
Zeta is still facing tough competition. Speaking at the J.P. Morgan conference, Steinberg compared Zeta to Salesforce, Adobe, and The Trade Desk, saying Zeta wants to take on point solutions in marketing. That’s a heavy lift. If growth slows, the market may not be kind to that kind of pitch.
Ad-data stocks were active. Shares of LiveRamp jumped after Publicis said it will acquire the U.S. data-collaboration firm in an enterprise value deal worth about $2.2 billion. The move shows agencies and marketing tech are still putting money down for data as they bet it will count for AI ad targeting.
Zeta has some big risks lined up. The company still needs to prove out the economics of the OpenAI ad comments, keep Athena adoption growing, and protect margins if more sales show up from lower-margin integrated channels. In its latest 10-Q, Zeta says its growth relies on bringing in and holding large “super-scaled” customers. The filing also warns that competition or bad calls on product investment could weigh on results. Securities and Exchange Commission
Investors put the upside trade back in play on Monday. The question is whether Zeta can turn the OpenAI and Snowflake storylines into real reported revenue instead of just more AI headlines.
