OpenAI’s Business Hub makes ChatGPT more search-like

By Olivia Hart

OpenAI launched a beta Business Hub on Tuesday, giving companies tools to verify profiles, publish specialized ChatGPT agents and track how users engage with their products.

Benji Shomair, OpenAI’s vice president of monetization, supplied the first operational detail on Monday: verification will not follow one universal route. His answer matters as ChatGPT moves deeper into product discovery, the role Google has long played for companies trying to reach shoppers.

OpenAI built the hub around three functions:

• Verified business profiles. Companies can create a profile, verify information about their products and services, and update it as those details change.
• Specialized business agents. Eligible companies can launch an agent that lets ChatGPT users ask questions about the business and its products.
• Limited business insights. A Google Analytics-style view will report profile views, business mentions, website clicks and other measures of interaction.

OpenAI said on Tuesday: “As people turn to AI to discover products, compare options and make decisions, ChatGPT has become the platform for people and businesses to connect through AI. Today’s announcement is an early step in bringing businesses more deeply into ChatGPT.”

Companies must clear a formal verification process, although OpenAI did not disclose what that process requires. “There are multiple verification methods that we use for different types of business in different markets,” Shomair told journalists on Monday.

OpenAI has tried to turn ChatGPT into a shopping destination before. The earlier effort let users buy products directly and operated under a commission-fee system. The model was viewed as a potentially huge revenue source and a way to make ChatGPT a more direct Amazon competitor. It failed to take off, and OpenAI retired the effort in March. The project had included a “checkout cart” feature.

The new product is less overtly transactional than buying inside ChatGPT. It gives companies a profile, an agent and a limited analytics layer, with verification standing between any business and the new discovery tools. The structure resembles the business profiles offered by Google and other search engines, where users often go to understand a company before shopping.

What does this change for businesses?

For eligible companies, ChatGPT is becoming another controlled channel for product discovery. Instead of relying only on how a chatbot describes a brand, a business can present verified information, answer questions through its own specialized agent, and see signals such as profile views, mentions and clicks.

But the comparison with Google also sets a tougher test. Google has been the web’s company-discovery layer since the internet’s early days; OpenAI’s previous attempt to rival Amazon through direct checkout did not take off. Business profiles and interaction data may prove more useful than a shopping-cart feature, though the announcement offers no evidence yet on reach or commercial results.

OpenAI has swapped a checkout flow for managed company profiles; whether they produce measurable discovery at scale is the test ahead.