OpenAI launches verified Business Agents in ChatGPT for shopping and brand chats

What OpenAI is launching

OpenAI is introducing a beta suite of business-focused features in ChatGPT, headlined by verified "Business Agents" — custom AI agents that represent individual companies and answer questions about their products and services. According to The Verge, the feature is available first to "eligible" e-commerce and online service businesses in the US.

The most obvious use case is shopping help. A user could ask a Business Agent about a company's offerings and then follow up with more specific questions, such as what separates two similar products.

How the agents work

Business Agents do not live in a separate section of ChatGPT. Instead, when a business that has created one appears in a response from ChatGPT, the user gets the option to start chatting with that agent. Companies define the agent's instructions and provide business context so the agent knows how to respond to questions about what they sell.

OpenAI says conversations with Business Agents will be clearly labeled and kept separate from the main ChatGPT conversation. That design choice is meant to make it obvious when a user has moved from the general assistant to something a specific company controls.

Verification and Business Hub

The trust problem — how users know an agent genuinely represents the brand it claims to — is handled by a companion feature called Business Hub. Companies use it to claim their organization and get verified. OpenAI is not publishing the details of that process: Benji Shomair, the company's VP of monetization, said in a press briefing that verification methods differ from business to business, according to The Verge.

Business Hub also serves as an analytics dashboard for companies. It shows insights such as how often a business is mentioned in ChatGPT responses and the top "discovery topics" — the subjects users ask about where that business tends to surface.

OpenAI's framing

OpenAI is presenting the launch as groundwork rather than a finished product. In a blog post, the company called the announcement "an early step in bringing businesses more deeply into ChatGPT" and said it is "starting with the foundations: accurate business information, useful insights and conversations that help people make informed decisions."

The company added that it will explore more ways for businesses to connect with customers — "directly or through agents and in ChatGPT and beyond" — with the stated goal of making ChatGPT more useful for decision-making while giving businesses new ways to participate and grow.

Why it matters

This move positions ChatGPT as a commercial surface, not just a conversational assistant. If people increasingly ask ChatGPT what to buy or which service to use, brands have a strong incentive to be present — and to control how they appear — inside those answers. Business Agents give them a direct channel to do exactly that.

It also raises questions the announcement leaves open. Verified, business-built agents blur the line between a neutral assistant answer and a company-curated marketing conversation, and much depends on verification being robust at a time when OpenAI is declining to explain how it works. The fact that the feature comes from OpenAI's monetization arm hints at future revenue models, such as businesses paying for presence or leads. For now, the beta covers only eligible US e-commerce and online services businesses, but the direction is clear: OpenAI wants ChatGPT to be a place where consumers make decisions and where businesses compete to influence them.