Zeta Global and OpenAI Team Up to Deliver Answer-Driven Marketing with Athena by Zeta™
Following unprecedented early demand, Zeta expands beta access for first two Athena agentic applications
Today, at CES 2026, Zeta Global (NYSE:ZETA), the AI Marketing Cloud, announced a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to power the conversational intelligence and agentic applications behind Athena by Zeta™, its superintelligent agent built for enterprise marketing. OpenAI models will support Athena's next phase of development, enabling more intuitive and intelligent experiences for enterprise marketers. Zeta also expanded beta access to Athena, meeting strong demand from enterprises seeking answer-driven marketing at scale.
First introduced at Zeta Live, Athena adapts to each user's goals and working style, instantly transforming questions into actionable answers. Athena brings answer-driven intelligence directly into marketing workflows, so teams spend less time navigating data and more time acting on insights. Today's announcement marks the next phase of Athena's evolution, with its first two agentic applications, Insights and Advisor, entering beta.
Zeta Powers its AI Advantage with Deeper OpenAI-Model Interactions
Zeta is deepening its technical collaboration with OpenAI to bring more natural, reliable conversational intelligence into Athena. The companies will align Athena's product roadmap with advances in OpenAI models, accelerating how enterprise teams get decision-ready answers inside their daily workflows. Zeta will also have the opportunity for early access to new OpenAI models and features, enabling deeper integration with the latest advancements in AI.
"Zeta shows how advanced AI moves beyond insight and into action," said Giancarlo ‘GC' Lionetti, Chief Commercial Officer at OpenAI. "By working together, we are bringing agentic intelligence directly into everyday marketing workflows, helping enterprises move faster and act with confidence."
"We've formed many partnerships throughout Zeta's history, but none will be more instrumental than the one we are embarking on with OpenAI," said David A. Steinberg, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Zeta Global. "AI is moving from the edges of marketing to the center of how enterprises operate, and Athena embodies that shift. It transforms the Zeta Marketing Platform into an intelligent operating system for growth – one that can listen, reason, and act on behalf of marketers. Together with OpenAI, we're making this new way of working easy to adopt and scale, so brands can move faster, spend smarter, and win the moments that matter most."
Athena's First Agentic Apps Enter Beta
Athena by Zeta™ now includes access to its first two agentic applications, Insights and Advisor. Together, the Insights and Advisor apps help marketers know more, act faster, and move from questions to answers instantly.
- Insights with Athena: A conversational, answers-driven analytics app that delivers instant access to trends, audience opportunities, emerging growth segments, and user-ready dashboards, so leaders can ask once and get a decision-ready answer, fast. Instead of digging through reports or waiting on teams, CMOs can ask a question and get a ready-to-use insight in seconds, complete with the performance drivers behind it.
- Advisor with Athena: A goal-driven optimization app that constantly scans campaigns, recommends the next best actions or executes them automatically, based on business objectives such as revenue growth, operating efficiency, customer retention, and user engagement.
TKO Group Holdings, Inc., the premium sports & entertainment company that comprises UFC and WWE, was part of Athena's Early Access Program and has already started to see its impact.
"Athena is already transforming how our team works. Generating segment-based reports from a simple prompt and running ad hoc analysis in seconds has been a game-changer," said Deborah Cook, Vice President, Data Intelligence at TKO Group Holdings, Inc. "Tasks that once required significant manual effort, like comparing performance across segments or identifying creative optimization opportunities, now happen instantly. As Athena expands into deeper geographic and performance insights, we're excited about its potential for broader adoption across our business."
Looking Ahead
Driven by unprecedented demand from leading brands and agencies, Zeta plans to launch Athena to all customers by the end of Q1 2026.
To learn more about Athena, built on the Zeta Marketing Platform and enabled by OpenAI models, visit https://zetaglobal.com/athena-by-zeta/.
About Zeta Global
Zeta Global (NYSE:ZETA) is the AI Marketing Cloud that leverages advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and trillions of consumer signals to make it easier for marketers to acquire, grow, and retain customers more efficiently. Through the Zeta Marketing Platform (ZMP), our vision is to make sophisticated marketing simple by unifying identity, intelligence, and omnichannel activation into a single platform – powered by one of the industry's largest proprietary databases and AI. Our enterprise customers across multiple verticals are empowered to personalize experiences with consumers at an individual level across every channel, delivering better results for marketing programs. Zeta was founded in 2007 by David A. Steinberg and John Sculley and is headquartered in New York City with offices around the world. To learn more, go to www.zetaglobal.com.
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