OpenAI rolls out new business profiles, making ChatGPT just a little bit more like Google

On Tuesday, OpenAI rolled out a Business Hub, a new surface where companies can build business profiles for ChatGPT. The feature, currently in beta, lets enterprises verify and update information about their products and services — a mechanism that closely mirrors profile offerings from Google and other search engines.

Eligible companies will also be able to create and launch a specialized business agent, letting ChatGPT users put questions directly to the business about itself and its products. The company framed the rollout as positioning ChatGPT as a connection point between people and businesses as consumers increasingly turn to AI to discover products, compare options, and reach decisions. "Today's announcement is an early step in bringing businesses more deeply into ChatGPT," the company said.

The hub also surfaces limited business insights in a manner recalling Google Analytics: profile views, business mentions, website clicks, and other metrics showing how ChatGPT users interact with a company's products. Businesses must pass a formal verification process to use their profiles, though OpenAI did not detail what that entails. Benji Shomair, VP of Monetization, told journalists on Monday that there are "multiple verification methods that we use for different types of business in different markets."

The launch marks a strategic pivot from OpenAI's earlier commerce ambitions. The company had previously tried to turn ChatGPT into an e-commerce hub where users could buy products directly through a commission fee system, an effort seen as a major revenue opportunity and a way to compete with Amazon. That project failed to gain traction, and OpenAI retired it in March, retiring features that had included a "checkout cart."

With profiles and interaction intelligence now layered in, ChatGPT increasingly resembles Google — long the place web users go to research the companies they intend to buy from. Open questions remain: whether the verification process will scale across markets and business sizes, how much insight data businesses will ultimately receive, and whether this discovery-first approach will succeed where direct in-app checkout did not.