Someone asks ChatGPT for three running shoes under $150, or an accountant near them. ChatGPT builds the list. Until this week, the businesses on that list had no way to fix an outdated price and no idea how often they were being named. That changed on November 10.
What OpenAI launched
OpenAI released Businesses in ChatGPT in beta. It has three parts.
The first is Business Hub, a dashboard where a company claims its profile, gets verified, and updates its information: description, products, prices, and stock. It can also upload a product feed so pricing and availability stay current. Verified profiles get a blue checkmark. For now, it is not available for service's companies yet.
OpenAI hasn't said exactly how verification works. Benji Shomair, its VP of Monetization, told TechCrunch the company uses "multiple verification methods" that vary by business type and market.
The second is analytics. A business can see how often ChatGPT mentions it, how many users click through to its website, and which topics come up in the conversations where it's cited. The data is aggregated. OpenAI says it does not share users' conversations with businesses.
The third, and the newest, is Business Agents. When a company shows up in an answer, the user can open its profile and chat with that company's agent, which responds using the information the business provided. It can compare products or help someone pick one. That conversation is labeled and kept separate from ChatGPT's own answers.
The rules for agents
OpenAI set conditions for these agents. They have to disclose that they're AI, keep prices accurate, and avoid pressure tactics. If a user wants to buy something or share personal data, they have to approve it explicitly. And there's no in-chat checkout for now: the agent sends the buyer to the brand's own site to complete the purchase.
That last point has a backstory. OpenAI already tried turning ChatGPT into a place to shop, with a cart and a commission on each sale, and retired it in March. This time the move looks more like Google's business profiles: ChatGPT as the place people do their research before they decide.
Availability matters here. Business Agents are open only to verified ecommerce and online service businesses in the US. The announcement says businesses can claim a profile "wherever ChatGPT is available," but it isn't clear yet whether that works outside the US today.
Where ads come in
The launch connects to ChatGPT Ads and a business can pay to have its ad send users straight to its Business Agent. According to Digiday, OpenAI says paying doesn't change how often ChatGPT recommends a business in its answers.
That's the part to watch. If organic answers and paid placements share the same screen, user trust depends on that line holding. For now, it's OpenAI's promise.
Why this matters for a business
OpenAI says 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week. Some of those questions are buying decisions: which software to use, which firm to hire, which product to get. If a business shows up with the wrong description, a year-old price, or doesn't show up at all, it loses ground in a place it probably wasn't watching.
Until now, finding out how ChatGPT talked about you meant paying third-party tools that estimate that visibility. Now, with OpenAI putting those numbers in its own dashboard, the baseline shifts: visibility in AI assistants starts getting measured the way Google traffic is.
A Checklist to Take Care of This Week
If you run an ecommerce or online service business in the US, you can claim your profile and, once verified, build an agent. Before you do, four things are worth getting in order:
Ask ChatGPT about your category and city the way a customer would. Note whether you show up, where, and what it says about you.
Review the public information AI uses to describe you: your website, your Google profile, your catalogs. If prices or services are out of date, fix them at the source first.
Claim your profile in Business Hub and start verification, since that step gates everything else.
Write down the ten questions customers ask most before they buy. That list is the foundation of what your agent needs to answer well.
The fourth one takes the longest and gets put off the most. A sales agent, whether it lives in ChatGPT, WhatsApp, or your own site, answers only as well as the information it's built on.
Companies that already have their catalog, pricing, and FAQs in order will be able to launch in days. The rest will have to start there.
This launch shows where search is heading: fewer lists of links, more conversations where AI recommends and the business answers. That channel is going to fill up with brand agents, and the gap between a useful one and one that recites the brochure comes down to design: what data it has, what it's allowed to say, when it hands off to a person, and how its work gets measured.
None of that depends on OpenAI's rollout schedule. It can start now, with the information the business already has.
Creating your profile in ChatGPT's Business Hub it has become as important as working on your GEO strategy to have visibility in the LLM.
Do you think other AI companies will follow the lead with this? Let us know what you think.
A Few Questions to Sum Up…
What is Businesses in ChatGPT? It's an OpenAI feature, launched in beta on November 10, 2026, that lets businesses claim and verify their profile in ChatGPT, update their information and pricing, see mention and click analytics, and in some cases build their own agent to talk with users.
What is a ChatGPT Business Agent? It's a company's AI agent that answers user questions inside ChatGPT using the information that company provided. The conversation is labeled and kept separate from ChatGPT's own answers. The agent must identify itself as AI and get user approval for purchases or sharing personal data.
Who can create a Business Agent? For now, verified ecommerce and online service businesses in the US. OpenAI hasn't announced dates for other countries.
How much does it cost? OpenAI hasn't published pricing for profiles or agents. The confirmed paid option is using your agent as the landing destination for a ChatGPT Ads campaign.
Can businesses see what users ask ChatGPT? No. According to OpenAI, businesses see aggregated data (mentions, clicks, and common topics) and don't get access to users' conversations or their chats with the agent.
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