OpenAI just built something that looks a lot like Google Business Profile inside ChatGPT — and if you run an e-commerce or online services company and have been treating ChatGPT as a curiosity rather than a discovery channel, Tuesday's launch is your wake-up call. The company that once tried and quietly retired a checkout-cart commerce play came back this week with something smarter, and more threatening to Google's grip on business discovery.
Here's what actually launched. On Tuesday, OpenAI opened a beta program called Business Hub that lets U.S. businesses claim a profile inside ChatGPT, update the information customers see, and track website clicks, mentions, and recurring topics over a rolling 28-day window — a setup TechCrunch compared directly to Google Analytics. Eligible U.S. e-commerce and online service businesses can go further and publish a 'Business Agent': a branded AI representative that answers questions about their specific products and policies. Local stores and restaurants can claim an existing U.S. listing, but the agent publishing feature is limited at launch to online businesses with a website.
Claiming a profile doesn't require a ChatGPT Enterprise contract or an ads account, according to VentureBeat. OpenAI verifies claims through a business phone number, email, website domain, or Shopify account. After that, the person managing the listing goes through a separate identity check via Persona before they can publish changes, connect a product feed, see analytics, or create an agent — at which point a blue checkmark appears. Retailers can upload a product feed with prices and stock, or connect their Shopify store directly. The OpenAI app in the Shopify App Store is listed as free. Profile management and Business Agent publishing are both free at launch, though Benji Shomair, OpenAI's VP of monetization, left the door open to charging for them later, VentureBeat reported. There's also a narrower test of 'Sponsored Agents' — where a shopper who clicks a ChatGPT ad lands in a labeled chat with that business's agent — but that's limited to selected advertisers for now.
Why this is different from OpenAI's last commerce attempt
OpenAI tried this before. It built a checkout cart with a commission fee system, positioned ChatGPT as a place to buy things directly, and shut the whole thing down in March, TechCrunch noted. Business Hub is a different bet. Instead of owning the transaction, OpenAI is owning the conversation that precedes it — the 'what should I buy' and 'does this company have what I need' moments that Google has monetized for two decades through search and Maps.
OpenAI says ChatGPT reaches 1.2 billion people a week. That's the number you need to sit with. Even if a fraction of those users are asking product or service questions, the volume of pre-purchase conversations happening inside ChatGPT is already significant — and until now, businesses had no way to influence, measure, or even see it. Business Hub changes that. The analytics alone — profile views, mentions, website clicks, top discovery topics — give marketing and e-commerce teams a data stream from a channel that was previously a black box.
OpenAI is careful to say that claiming a profile carries no guarantee of better placement or more sales, and that ChatGPT will continue to make independent recommendations. That's the right disclaimer. But it's also a little like Google saying that verifying your Business Profile doesn't guarantee you rank first on Maps. True, technically. And yet every serious local business claims the listing anyway, because the downside of not claiming it — letting stale or wrong information sit there — is worse than the uncertainty of what claiming it actually buys you.
The argument for ignoring this (and why it's wrong)
The fair skeptic's case: OpenAI has tried commerce before and failed. The analytics are aggregate and threshold-gated, so early data may be sparse or blank. The Business Agent feature is limited to U.S. online businesses. And OpenAI hasn't said when or whether any of this expands. Reasonable objections, all of them.
But here's the thing. The cost of claiming a profile and connecting your Shopify catalog is low. The cost of being the business whose competitor claims their profile while yours sits unclaimed — with outdated hours, wrong pricing, or no agent at all — is not. Google Business Profile taught us that lesson once. The businesses that moved early got years of advantage in local search. The ones that waited found the work was harder and the gains were smaller by the time they got around to it.
The Sponsored Agents format is the detail that deserves the most attention from marketing leaders. A shopper clicks a ChatGPT ad and lands in a labeled conversation with that brand's AI agent. That's a fundamentally different ad unit than a link to a landing page. It compresses the awareness-to-consideration funnel into a single conversation. The Verge confirmed that these chats are clearly labeled and kept separate from a user's main ChatGPT conversation — so there's at least a transparency layer. But the format is in limited testing now, and the businesses that understand it first will have a real edge when it opens up.
What to do this week
If you run an eligible U.S. e-commerce or online services business, send someone to apply for a Business Hub claim before the end of the week. Don't wait for the analytics to prove the channel's worth — you can't get the data until you're in. If you're on Shopify, the catalog connection is listed as free and appears to be a straightforward setup. Check what information ChatGPT is currently surfacing about your business before you claim anything, so you know what you're correcting.
Ask your marketing and paid-media teams one direct question: do we have a plan for ChatGPT as a discovery and ad channel, or are we still treating it as a writing tool? If the answer is the latter, that's the gap to close. And if your agency or in-house team manages your Google Business Profile but hasn't mentioned Business Hub, that's a conversation worth having today.
OpenAI said Tuesday that this is 'an early step in bringing businesses more deeply into ChatGPT.' My bet is that the free window on Business Agent publishing closes within 12 months, and that the Sponsored Agents format expands well before that. The businesses that have already built and tested their agents by then will be the ones who know what works. The ones who waited for proof will be paying to catch up.