AI Companies Paying Influencers: OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic's Creators, Listed

Our analysts compiled every creator we could document with a disclosed or press-confirmed deal from OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic, 157 creators in all, drawing on 186 disclosed sponsored Instagram posts published between Dec. 13, 2025 and Oct. 9, 2026, 983 sponsored YouTube videos tracked by GetSponsored since January 2023, and press reports from CNBC, TechCrunch, Observer, The Hollywood Reporter, Fortune, NBC News, and Straight Arrow News, to show who the three AI labs pay to promote ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude as of Q4 2026.

On the weekend of July 31, OpenAI flew about 30 tech, career, and lifestyle creators to Wildflower Farms, a Hudson Valley resort where rooms run more than $2,000 a night, for what it called Summer Camp. The posts that followed, showing private cabins, beekeeping, and ChatGPT Work workshops, set off a backlash about AI's environmental and labor costs, and some attendees deleted them within days. The trip pulled into view a spending race that had been building all year. CNBC reported in February that Google has paid some creators $400,000 to $600,000 for long-term partnerships, and that AI companies spent more than $1 billion on US digital ads in 2025. This report lists the creators behind those campaigns, lab by lab.

In the following sections, we cover the largest creators across all three labs, each lab's full creator roster, how the rosters break down by country, platform, and size, what the creators promoted, sponsored YouTube volume, the creators who work with more than one lab, the Summer Camp attendees and deleted posts, other brand trips, and the payment figures reported in public.

The Largest Creators With an AI Lab Deal

We ranked every creator by followers on the platform carrying the sponsored post, so the list measures the audience each deal reached. A celebrity partnership and a niche AI explainer can sit a few rows apart, which shows how differently the three labs spend.

Source: Top GEO Agencies analysis of disclosed and press-confirmed AI lab creator deals, conducted October 2026.

Key Findings

• MrBeast's YouTube channel, at 524 million subscribers, is roughly ten times the size of the next creator, Sachin Tendulkar, whose OpenAI partnership post went up on Sept. 28.
• Google holds 11 of the 25 places, built on large lifestyle and entertainment accounts such as Laura Whaley, Abdullah Al-Alawi, and Alan Chikin Chow.
• Anthropic's largest creators work in tech and office humor: Tabitha Swatosh, Ross Pomerantz, Corporate Natalie, Track Star, and Chloe Shih each have more than a million followers.

OpenAI's ChatGPT Creators

OpenAI's roster is the largest of the three and the most international. 42 of its 87 creators are based in the US, 18 in India, and 9 in Canada, and its India push includes the two largest accounts on the list. The posts promote ChatGPT itself, Codex, and, since the summer, ChatGPT Work.

Source: Modash content library; press reports listed in Sources; Top GEO Agencies analysis, conducted October 2026.

Key Findings

• The largest US creators promoting OpenAI are Faares Quadri (1.1M), Alex Nino (1.1M), and Roberto P. Nickson (944K).
• Codex is the main product for 24 creators and ChatGPT Work for 18, which includes the Summer Camp guests the trip was built to teach.
• OpenAI's median creator has 180,555 followers, and only 5 of its 87 creators pass one million.

Google's Gemini Creators

Google's Gemini roster is less than half the size of OpenAI's and the largest in reach. Its disclosed Instagram posts begin in late July 2026 and promote the Gemini app, Google AI Pro, and Gemini for students, and its MrBeast deal dwarfs every other creator partnership we found.

Source: Modash content library; press reports listed in Sources; Top GEO Agencies analysis, conducted October 2026. Google, Sept. 2, 2026.

Key Findings

• Google's median creator has 458,150 followers, more than double the OpenAI and Anthropic medians.
• The MrBeast agreement is a multi-year partnership with Beast Industries covering Gemini and Google Health, announced Sept. 2, with the first video published Sept. 5.
• 26 of Google's 41 creators are based in the US, and 8 more are in Canada.

Anthropic's Claude Creators

Anthropic's roster is the most US-centered of the three: 28 of its 40 creators are based in the US. Its campaigns lean on career, office humor, and tech explainer accounts, and the posts promote Claude, Claude Code, and Claude Cowork.

Source: Modash content library; press reports listed in Sources; Top GEO Agencies analysis, conducted October 2026. CNBC, Feb. 6, 2026.

Anthropic also ran a LinkedIn creator campaign in 2025. Favikon's study of it, published June 30, 2025, covers 50 brand-partnership posts tagged #ClaudePartner from 31 LinkedIn creators, all published in the two months before the study. 18 of those creators posted twice, 12 posted once, and one posted three times. The sponsored posts earned 6,178 comments in total against 8,373 for the same creators' average posts, or 73.8%, and 68% of them drew fewer comments than the creator's average.

Source: Favikon, Inside Anthropic's Influencer Marketing Program, 2025.

Anthropic also runs Claude Community Ambassadors, a separate program for people who host local meetups, workshops, and hackathons. Ambassadors receive no direct payment. Anthropic covers event funding, swag, and promotion, and gives ambassadors monthly API credits and access to pre-release features.

Key Findings

• Anthropic's largest creators are Tabitha Swatosh (2.6M), Ross Pomerantz (1.6M), and Corporate Natalie (1.5M), all US-based.
• Megan Lieu told CNBC her Anthropic deal for Claude products was the most significant brand deal she has signed.
• 9 of Anthropic's 40 creators have fewer than 50,000 followers, the highest share of small creators among the three labs.

Creators by Lab, Country, Platform, and Size

Counting creators by where they are based and where they post shows how each lab spreads its budget. We count each creator once per lab.

Source: Top GEO Agencies analysis of disclosed and press-confirmed AI lab creator deals, conducted October 2026.

Source: Top GEO Agencies analysis of disclosed and press-confirmed AI lab creator deals, conducted October 2026.

Source: Top GEO Agencies analysis of disclosed and press-confirmed AI lab creator deals, conducted October 2026.

Source: Top GEO Agencies analysis of disclosed and press-confirmed AI lab creator deals, conducted October 2026.

Key Findings

• The US accounts for 57% of unique creators, and Anthropic has the highest US share at 70%.
• India is OpenAI's second market, with 18 creators, while Google has one Indian creator and Anthropic has none.
• Instagram carries 163 of the 168 creator-lab rows. The three TikTok rows are Summer Camp guests, and the YouTube and LinkedIn rows are MrBeast and Megan Lieu.

What the Creators Promoted

We tagged each creator with the main product in their disclosed posts. The split shows which launches each lab paid creators to explain.

Source: Top GEO Agencies analysis of disclosed and press-confirmed AI lab creator deals, conducted October 2026.

Key Findings

• ChatGPT itself is the top OpenAI product with 33 creators, and Codex follows with 24.
• Google spread its posts across the Gemini app (17), Google AI Pro (8), and Gemini for students (7).
• Most Anthropic creators promoted Claude in general (27), with Claude Code (7) and Claude Cowork (5) behind it.

Sponsored YouTube Videos by AI Lab

YouTube sponsorships run as read ads inside creators' videos, so we used GetSponsored's sponsor tracking, which logs each sponsored integration by brand. OpenAI appears under two sponsor labels, ChatGPT and OpenAI, and Anthropic under Claude and Anthropic.

Source: GetSponsored sponsor pages, updated Oct. 28, 2026; Top GEO Agencies analysis.

Source: GetSponsored sponsor pages, updated Oct. 28, 2026; Top GEO Agencies analysis.

Source: GetSponsored sponsor pages, updated Oct. 28, 2026; Top GEO Agencies analysis.

Source: GetSponsored sponsor pages, updated Oct. 28, 2026; Top GEO Agencies analysis.

Source: GetSponsored sponsor pages, updated Oct. 28, 2026; Top GEO Agencies analysis.

Key Findings

• Counting shared creators once, about 214 YouTube channels have run OpenAI sponsorships, about 171 have run Anthropic sponsorships, and 51 have run Google Gemini sponsorships.
• Chris Williamson's channel has run 52 ChatGPT-sponsored videos, the most of any individual creator under an AI lab label. The next highest, ProgrammingKnowledge2 for OpenAI and Smart Hemant 4 You for Google Gemini, have 14 each.
• Anthropic sponsorships rose sharply in March 2026, the month after its Super Bowl campaign, and its Claude label's most-booked creators are AI tutorial channels such as Augmented AI and Darrel Wilson.

Creators Who Work With More Than One AI Lab

Many AI creators sell to every lab. We matched creators across the three rosters to find the ones with disclosed deals from two or more labs.

Source: Top GEO Agencies analysis of disclosed and press-confirmed AI lab creator deals, conducted October 2026.

Key Findings

• Ten creators have deals with two or more labs, and Andres Vidoza is the only one with disclosed deals from all three.
• OpenAI and Anthropic share the most creators, a pattern that repeats on YouTube, where 39 channels have run both Claude and ChatGPT sponsorships.
• Three Summer Camp guests, Avni Barman, Erik Cupsa, and Megan Lieu, also hold paid Gemini or Claude deals.

OpenAI's Summer Camp: Who Went and What Happened

OpenAI hosted the trip over the weekend of July 31 to teach creators its new ChatGPT Work tools, according to the company. An OpenAI spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter that creators are an important part of its community and of how people learn about its products. Andrew Yeung, a creator economy commentator, called the trip a comms disaster and estimated its cost at $10,000 a head, Fortune reported.

Source: Observer; The Hollywood Reporter; Straight Arrow News; Fortune; TikTok; Modash; Top GEO Agencies analysis.

Source: Top GEO Agencies analysis of disclosed and press-confirmed AI lab creator deals, conducted October 2026.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter; Straight Arrow News; TechCrunch.

Key Findings

• Sreya Halder, with 437,000 TikTok followers, deleted the posts showing the trip and kept a Codex tutorial on her Instagram.
• Marisa Chentakul posted about the trip on X on Friday, July 31, and deleted the post on the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 3.
• Grace McCarrick kept her posts and defended the trip on LinkedIn, writing that she had not considered it could be controversial.

Other Brand Trips and Events for Creators

Summer Camp was OpenAI's first luxury trip, and all three labs have hosted smaller creator events. We list the ones a creator disclosed in a post.

Source: Modash content library; press reports listed in Sources; Top GEO Agencies analysis, conducted October 2026.

What AI Labs Pay Creators

Neither the labs nor most creators publish deal terms. These are the payment and cost figures reported in public sources.

Source: CNBC; Fortune; The Hollywood Reporter; GetSponsored; Anthropic.

Key Findings

• AJ Eckstein of Creator Match told CNBC that some of the bigger AI companies have so much money to spend that they do not care to negotiate.
• Anthropic hired Lexie Barnhorn, formerly of Notion, in March 2025 to lead its influencer marketing across social media and podcasts.
• Google Gemini has the highest estimated YouTube rate of the five sponsor labels, $2,075 to $4,150 per 60-second mid-roll.

What the Record Shows About AI Lab Creator Deals

The three labs buy creators in different ways. OpenAI runs the widest roster, spread across the US, India, and Canada, and pairs paid posts with hosted events from Brisbane to the Hudson Valley. Google buys reach, with fewer creators, larger audiences, and a multi-year partnership with MrBeast, the most-subscribed channel on YouTube. Anthropic concentrates on US career and tech creators and on YouTube tutorials, where its Claude label has booked 238 sponsored videos since May 2024.

The disclosure trail differs too. Instagram's paid partnership label makes most Instagram deals visible, while hosted trips carry no standard label, which is why the Summer Camp guests are known from press reports and their own posts. Several of those posts are gone.

The most recent disclosed posts in our data went up on Oct. 9, 2026, when Rawan, a US creator with 218,562 Instagram followers, and Sarah Li, a Canadian creator with 103,554, published Claude posts tagged #ad and #sponsored.