News
Zeta Global Partners with OpenAI to Revolutionise Marketing with Athena
Source: martechseries.com
Published on January 6, 2026
Updated on January 6, 2026

Enhancing Athena with OpenAI’s Advanced Models
Zeta Global has announced a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to enhance its Athena by Zeta™ platform, integrating advanced conversational intelligence and agentic applications to transform enterprise marketing. This partnership aims to leverage OpenAI’s models to make Athena more intuitive and intelligent, meeting the growing demand for answer-driven marketing solutions at scale. The move signals a significant shift in how AI is being integrated into marketing workflows, enabling teams to spend less time navigating data and more time acting on actionable insights.
Athena by Zeta™, first introduced at Zeta Live, is designed to adapt to each user’s goals and working style, instantly transforming questions into actionable answers. The platform brings answer-driven intelligence directly into marketing workflows, allowing teams to focus on strategic decisions rather than data management. With OpenAI’s support, Athena is entering its next phase of development, with its first two agentic applications, Insights and Advisor, now in beta.
The collaboration between Zeta Global and OpenAI 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 early access to new OpenAI models and features, enabling deeper integration with the latest AI advancements. This partnership is expected to make Athena more natural and reliable, providing enterprise marketers with a powerful tool to drive growth and efficiency.
Transforming Marketing Workflows
The integration of OpenAI’s models into Athena is set to revolutionise marketing workflows by making them more intelligent and efficient. Giancarlo ‘GC’ Lionetti, Chief Commercial Officer at OpenAI, highlighted the significance of this collaboration, stating, "Zeta shows how advanced AI moves beyond insight and into action. By working together, we are bringing agentic intelligence directly into everyday marketing workflows, helping enterprises move faster and act with confidence."
David A. Steinberg, Co-Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Zeta Global, emphasised the transformative potential of this partnership. He said, "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."
Industry Reaction and Early Adoption
The early access program for Athena has already garnered positive feedback from participants. TKO Group Holdings, Inc., which includes UFC and WWE, was part of Athena’s Early Access Program and has reported significant improvements in their marketing operations. Deborah Cook, Vice President of Data Intelligence at TKO Group Holdings, Inc., noted, "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. 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, the potential for broader adoption across various industries becomes more apparent. The platform’s ability to provide instant access to trends, audience opportunities, and emerging growth segments makes it a valuable tool for marketers looking to stay ahead in a competitive landscape.
In conclusion, the strategic collaboration between Zeta Global and OpenAI to enhance Athena by Zeta™ marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of marketing technology. By leveraging OpenAI’s advanced models, Athena is poised to deliver more intuitive and intelligent experiences for enterprise marketers, driving innovation and efficiency in marketing workflows. As the platform continues to evolve, it has the potential to transform how brands approach marketing, enabling them to act faster and smarter in an ever-changing market landscape.