OpenAI has launched “Businesses in ChatGPT” in beta, turning the chatbot into a place where companies can claim a verified profile, keep their details current, and talk to customers through their own AI agent. The launch, announced on 10 November, is OpenAI’s most direct move yet into territory long held by search engines and business directories — the point where people decide what to buy.
The system runs through a new Business Hub, reached from ChatGPT’s sidebar. Any eligible business in a market where ChatGPT is available can claim the profile the chatbot already shows for it, then update its website, description, logo, delivery and returns policies, and add product feeds carrying prices and availability. Shopify merchants can connect their store directly. OpenAI says claiming a profile is free at launch and does not guarantee better placement in ChatGPT’s answers — the chatbot’s independent recommendations, it stresses, remain unchanged.
Verified businesses also get aggregated figures on how they appear in ChatGPT: mentions and website clicks over the past 28 days, plus “discovery topics”, the themes of conversations in which their site was cited. OpenAI says it shares no individual conversations or chats with businesses, and only shows figures once volumes pass a privacy threshold.
The second half of the launch is Business Agents. Eligible ecommerce and online-service businesses in the United States can build, test and launch a clearly labelled chatbot that answers shoppers’ questions — comparing products, explaining policies — inside ChatGPT, in a conversation kept separate from the user’s original chat. The agent cannot take payments, make bookings or check orders; it links back to the company’s own site to close the sale. Businesses can also pay to sponsor their agent as the destination for ChatGPT ads, with sponsored placements clearly labelled.
OpenAI frames the audience as the 1.2 billion people it says use ChatGPT each week — its own figure, not independently verified. It has not said when Business Agents will reach other markets, including the UK, and its monetisation chief did not rule out charging for the hub and agents later, according to Digiday. For now the launch is a bet that the place people ask for buying advice becomes the place businesses pay to be found — without, OpenAI insists, letting payment decide what ChatGPT recommends.
Sources: OpenAI, “Introducing Businesses in ChatGPT” (10 November 2026), https://openai.com/index/introducing-businesses-chatgpt/ ; Digiday, via https://madrobot.blog/2026/11/10/openai-chatgpt-business-agents-verified-profiles/
