Businesses in ChatGPT Is Live: Free Business Agents That Answer Shoppers — But Can't Take Your Order

OpenAI opened a shopfront in one of the busiest rooms on the internet. ChatGPT now reaches 1.2 billion people a week, and OpenAI says more than 700 million of them use it to shop every week. On November 10, 2026, the company launched Businesses in ChatGPT in beta: a way for a business to claim its profile inside ChatGPT, keep its details current, see how often ChatGPT sends people its way, and, if it qualifies, publish a Business Agent that answers shoppers' questions. The catch sits in the job description. The agent talks. It does not sell. It cannot take an order, make a booking, or check where a parcel is.

That limit is the whole story, and it is also the reason the launch matters. A business can now shape what ChatGPT says about it, in the place where hundreds of millions of people already shop each week, without paying for the privilege at launch. The price of entry is verification paperwork, a clean product feed, and a return policy written well enough for an AI to quote. Everything after the click, the checkout, the "where is my order?", still happens on the business's own website.

What Businesses in ChatGPT actually is

OpenAI describes the launch as "a new way for businesses to show up in ChatGPT and connect with customers." It has two parts. The first is a claimed business profile inside a new dashboard called Business Hub, at chatgpt.com/business-hub. The second is an optional Business Agent, a chat a business publishes on its own profile.

Once a claim is verified, a business can update its description, hours, location, contact information, website, category, logo, cover photo, delivery policy, and return policy, and add a product feed with prices and availability. The feed can come from Shopify Catalog, a CSV upload, or a hosted feed URL. The business also gets Insights: aggregated counts of how often ChatGPT mentions it, how often people click through to its website, and the common themes in the answers where it appears. A business can add teammates and give an agency access, each using their own ChatGPT account.

Three things about the profile are worth stating plainly, because they are the opposite of what most owners will assume. Claiming a profile does not earn the blue verified check. That appears only after a separate identity check with Persona is approved. Claiming does not change how visible the business is in ChatGPT. And connecting a product feed does not publish an agent or guarantee that ChatGPT recommends the business's products.

What a Business Agent can and cannot do

A Business Agent is a chat a business publishes on its own ChatGPT profile. When a brand shows up in an answer, the shopper can open its profile and, if an agent is live, start a chat with it. OpenAI says the conversation is clearly labeled and separate from the customer's original ChatGPT conversation, and the agent answers from the product and policy information the business supplied, using instructions the business wrote.

OpenAI's demo shows the intended use. A shopper asks for a gift for a six-year-old who loves drawing, under $30, and the agent answers with two products and prices from the store's feed. The agent can ask follow-up questions and help people compare products, then send them to the website to learn more or buy. That is a sales-floor question, and it is the kind the agent is built for.

The limits are just as specific. OpenAI's help center FAQ asks whether an agent can complete purchases, make bookings, or check a customer's order, and answers: No. The current experience lets the agent explain products and policies andIf the business also has a plugin in ChatGPT, the agent's separate chat does not use that plugin's data or connect to its capabilities. The Business Agents Policy adds that an agent must not share user information or submit a form, booking, or purchase on a user's behalf without explicit authorization through an approved feature.

The policy sets rules for what goes into the agent's instructions. The agent must be clear that it is AI representing the business. It must not appear to be an independent adviser, a human, or something endorsed by OpenAI. It must not make claims about products, prices, or availability that the business cannot support, invent products, prices, stock, reviews, or guarantees, or hide fees and conditions that matter to the question. It must not create false urgency or keep pushing a sale after someone says no. And a business cannot bring an agent of its own: the agent is built inside Business Hub, not imported from another platform.

Who can claim, and who can publish an agent

Claiming and publishing an agent have different gates, and mixing them up is the most common misunderstanding in the first day of coverage. The table below is drawn from OpenAI's announcement and help center.

OpenAI says it plans to expand agents to more markets and categories over time, but it has given no dates or country list. Verification alone does not guarantee agent eligibility: OpenAI reviews both the business category and the agent's intended use before allowing publication, and says it may decline a business whose products or practices raise safety or integrity concerns, or defer a category until it has safeguards for it.

Each distinct brand is managed separately. Central management across a parent company's brands and locations is not currently available, and claiming the main brand does not claim its locations. Published profiles stay up: only unpublished drafts can be deleted, and OpenAI Support cannot delete, unpublish, or hide a published profile as part of a setup or ownership request.

How to claim your business and publish an agent

The setup follows six steps in OpenAI's help center guide. The whole flow runs inside ChatGPT, in Business Hub.

1. Find your listing. Open Business Hub from the ChatGPT sidebar and search for the business by name. If an eligible online business is not listed, there may be an option to add it. On launch day, at least one hands-on attempt to add an unlisted business reached a waitlist instead, so not every business gets in on the first try.
2. Verify the claim. Choose one method: a code by SMS or call to the business phone, a code to the business email, a TXT record on the website's domain, or a Shopify login. OpenAI reviews the claim and emails a decision.
3. Pass the Persona identity check. Publishing changes, viewing insights, and creating an agent all wait on this separate check. It can ask for a government ID, business registration details, and proof of authorization to represent the business. The blue check appears only after this is approved.
4. Fill in the details. Website, description, category, logo, cover photo, delivery policy, return policy, and a product feed if the business sells products. OpenAI reviews and publishes changes, so they do not appear instantly.
5. Preview the agent. OpenAI suggests testing with a question customers often ask, its example being whether a sale item can be returned. If the answer is wrong, fix the information or the instructions and test again.
6. Publish. Customers can only chat with a published agent. Publishing is a separate, optional step from claiming.

Shopify merchants get the shortest path. Connecting the store, either from Business Hub or from the Shopify admin, streamlines verification, shares products, prices, and availability through Shopify Catalog, and can create a draft agent to review. Shopify is not a requirement: any eligible business can upload a CSV feed that follows OpenAI's product feed specification, or connect a hosted feed URL, and a business agent can be set up with or without Shopify.

What it costs

OpenAI's own pages list no fee for claiming a profile or publishing an agent, and they do not use the word free. What they do say is that claiming, publishing an agent, and advertising are separate, and that no ad purchase or agent is required to claim. Digiday, after a briefing with Benji Shomair, OpenAI's vice president of monetization, reports that Business Hub and the agents cost nothing for now, and that Shomair left a paid model open for later. The honest way to state the price today is: no fee is charged at launch, and OpenAI has not promised it stays that way.

The paid layer is advertising. A business can sponsor its Business Agent and use it as the destination for ChatGPT Ads. That builds on the Sponsored Agents test OpenAI announced on September 16, 2026, which let people start a labeled conversation with an advertiser's agent after clicking an ad. Sponsored placements are labeled and separate from ChatGPT's answers, and OpenAI says advertising does not influence its independent answers. No sponsorship price or ad rate is published on the launch page.

The real cost today is the work. Verification takes two rounds, a product feed needs prices and availability kept current, and a return policy has to be written well enough for an AI to quote it accurately. A business that publishes an agent with a stale feed or a vague policy will get the agent quoting the stale feed and the vague policy, in front of shoppers, in ChatGPT's own interface.

What the Insights dashboard shows

Insights cover the past 28 days and report three numbers: mentions, website clicks, and discovery topics. The definitions matter more than the dashboard. For an online business, a mention counts when ChatGPT references the business's website; the brand name alone does not count. For a local business, a mention counts when ChatGPT shows that location as a result, even without opening the listing. Website clicks count how often people click through to the site. Discovery topics are the common themes in answers that mentioned or cited the business. They are categories, not individual prompts.

Businesses do not receive individual prompts or consumer conversations, including chats with their own Business Agent. OpenAI says it shares aggregated insights only when enough conversations and interactions meet reporting thresholds. A blank metric does not necessarily mean zero activity. It can mean the reporting threshold was not reached, data is still being collected, or reporting is unavailable.

For brands, this is the first first-party data ChatGPT has offered. Until now, the only comparable figure came from Bing Webmaster Tools, and the rest was estimated by third-party AI search tools. Some businesses have taken a different route entirely, using tools such as Firecrawl, which puts Clay-style prospecting inside ChatGPT and Claude, to reach ChatGPT users without waiting for OpenAI to offer a profile. That does not make the numbers complete: 28 days, three metrics, no transcripts, and thresholds that hide small volumes. It makes them OpenAI's own count, which is a better baseline than a guess.

What claiming does not do

OpenAI is unusually direct about the limits, and they are worth repeating because the launch will be sold to small businesses as visibility. Claiming lets a business manage the information it provides. It does not guarantee increased visibility, higher placement, or sales, and it gives no direct control over ChatGPT's independent recommendations. Advertising does not influence those answers either. Connecting a feed does not publish an agent or guarantee that ChatGPT recommends the business's products.

That framing puts Businesses in ChatGPT in a different lane from the agent-shopping stories the site has covered this year. Walmart lets AI agents shop for customers, with spending limits built in, and Mastercard's Agent Pay lets agents pay for services on a customer's behalf. A Business Agent does neither. It answers questions and hands the shopper to the website. The transaction stays where it always was.

There is a second, quieter limit. A Business Agent is not a support agent. The questions that fill an ecommerce queue are mostly about orders that already exist, and those still land in the helpdesk. The agent covers the top of the journey: does this come in a larger size, what is the return window, which of these two is better for a six-year-old. Everything after the purchase stays with the business.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Expecting the agent to handle orders. It cannot complete purchases, make bookings, or check an order. Plan the handoff to the website and the helpdesk before publishing, not after the first "where is my order?" arrives.
• Treating a claim as a ranking boost. OpenAI says claiming does not change visibility or recommendations. A claimed profile with wrong hours is worse than an unclaimed one with right ones, because the business now owns the error.
• Publishing with a thin feed. The agent can only quote what the feed and the policies say. Missing prices, stale availability, or a one-line return policy become wrong answers in ChatGPT's interface, attached to the business's name.
• Writing instructions the policy forbids. No invented prices or stock, no hidden fees, no claims the business cannot support, no posing as a human or an independent adviser. OpenAI reviews the category and intended use before publication.
• Assuming the agent replaces support. It covers pre-sale questions only. Post-sale questions, returns, and exchanges still need a staffed channel.
• Publishing before testing. OpenAI's own guide says to test with a common customer question and fix the information if the answer is wrong. A published agent is live to shoppers; a draft is not.

Frequently asked questions

Is Businesses in ChatGPT free?

OpenAI lists no fee for claiming a profile or publishing an agent, and Digiday reports, after a briefing with OpenAI's monetization VP Benji Shomair, that Business Hub and agents cost nothing for now. Shomair did not rule out charging later. The paid option is sponsoring an agent as a ChatGPT Ads destination; no sponsorship price is published.

Can a Business Agent take orders or check an order?

No. OpenAI's help center FAQ answers that question directly: the current experience lets the agent explain products and policies andThe agent cannot submit a purchase or booking on a customer's behalf.

Who can publish a Business Agent?

Eligible ecommerce and online service businesses in the US with a website. OpenAI reviews the business category and the agent's intended use before allowing publication, and verification alone does not guarantee eligibility. OpenAI says it plans to expand to more markets and categories, with no dates given.

Do I need Shopify to set up a business agent?

No. Shopify merchants get a shorter path, with verification and product sharing through Shopify Catalog and an automatic draft agent for eligible products, but any eligible business can claim with a phone, email, or domain record and connect a product feed by CSV upload or hosted URL.

Will claiming my business help it rank higher in ChatGPT?

No. OpenAI says claiming does not change visibility, does not guarantee increased visibility or sales, and gives no control over ChatGPT's independent recommendations. Advertising does not influence those answers either. What claiming does is let the business correct its details and see its own mention and click data.

What data do I get about shoppers?

Aggregated Insights for the past 28 days: mentions, website clicks, and discovery topics. Businesses never receive individual prompts or conversations, including chats with their own Business Agent, and metrics are shared only when activity meets reporting thresholds.

Businesses in ChatGPT is a modest launch with a large address. It gives a business a verified profile and a talking agent inside the product where more than 700 million people a week already shop, charges nothing for either at launch, and stops short of the transaction. For an ecommerce business that already answers pre-sale questions on its own site, claiming a profile is a low-cost way to make sure ChatGPT's version of the business is the business's own version. The agent is worth publishing only if the feed and the policies behind it are accurate, because from launch day the agent speaks for the brand, in ChatGPT, to shoppers who have not reached the website yet.

Sources

• Introducing Businesses in ChatGPT — OpenAI, November 10, 2026 (launch announcement; 1.2 billion weekly users, 700 million weekly shoppers, beta scope, sponsorship)
• Setting up your business on ChatGPT — OpenAI Help Center (setup steps, verification, Persona, FAQ on purchases and bookings, Insights definitions)
• Business Agents Policy — OpenAI, updated November 10, 2026 (agent rules, eligibility review, no unauthorized purchases)
• OpenAI Gives Businesses New Tools to Reach ChatGPT Users — PYMNTS, November 10, 2026
• ChatGPT Business Agents explained: setup, eligibility, limits — eesel.ai, November 10, 2026
• ChatGPT Opens Business Profiles and Agents to Brands — The Keyword (Digiday reporting on free-for-now pricing and Shomair briefing)
• Businesses in ChatGPT: verified profiles and AI Business Agents — MadRobot, November 10, 2026
• ChatGPT Business Hub: How to Claim Your Business in ChatGPT — ColabContent, November 10, 2026 (launch-day hands-on, waitlist for unlisted businesses)
• A deep dive into Businesses in ChatGPT — Flavio Copes, November 10, 2026