OpenAI Launches Businesses in ChatGPT Beta: Profile, Analytics and an AI Sales Agent, All Free

If your customers ask ChatGPT for advice, the question of "what it says about you" stops being theoretical. OpenAI apparently decided that brands themselves should answer it, and rolled out the Businesses in ChatGPT beta. It is essentially its own Google Business Profile, only inside the chat, with an AI sales agent included.

What's inside the beta

The first part is Business Hub. You verify your company and get a blue checkmark. After that, you edit the description, prices and stock yourself. Hub works in all markets where ChatGPT is available, but local stores and restaurants can claim a listing only in the US for now. Verification is standard: documents for the owner, email and phone checks, and company documents. The author of the post being analyzed (the AI Product channel) has registered and is still waiting for the process to complete.

The second part is analytics. These are 28-day aggregates: brand mentions, clicks to the website, and recurring conversation topics. The conversations themselves are not shared with the business, and numbers appear only after a minimum threshold is reached. For a small brand, this means the dashboard may be empty in the first few weeks.

The third part is Business Agent, an AI sales agent inside ChatGPT. It answers questions about your products and services, drawing its data from a product feed with prices and stock or from a connected Shopify store. For now it works only in the US and only for ecommerce and online services. You cannot buy directly in the agent: it sends the person to the brand's website. OpenAI is developing the payment part together with Visa.

Why OpenAI is doing this: advertising

The main motivation lies in advertising. The agent can be sponsored, meaning you pay for the tokens of people who talk to it, and made into a landing page for ChatGPT Ads. This continues the September announcement: clicking an ad opens a separate conversation with the company's agent. The first partners were HubSpot and Shopify. Citing data on OpenAI's advertising business, the post's author gives these figures: $1 billion in annual run rate and more than 100,000 advertisers in 89 countries. They cannot be verified from this material, but the direction is obvious: ChatGPT is becoming a storefront, not just a chat.

For now, Hub and agents are free. Most likely, a paid subscription will appear later, or the main revenue will come from advertising. OpenAI assures that payment does not affect how often a business is recommended. The author ironically notes that Google once started with similar promises.

Who this threatens

GEO startups such as Peec AI, Profound and OtterlyAI are under threat. They sold brands an assessment of their visibility in ChatGPT. Now the primary source hands out real numbers for free. True, it has its own limitations: only aggregates, only for ChatGPT itself, and no raw conversations. Third-party services may survive through competitor comparisons and monitoring of other models, but a simple "mention measurement" is no longer a product.

What to do in practice

• Claim your profile now, while it is free and there are few competitors on the beta list. Verification takes time, so it is better to gather your documents in advance.
• Get your product feed in order: prices, stock, descriptions. The agent will answer only as well as the quality of the clean data you give it. If you use Shopify, connecting is easier.
• Don't count on a quick launch in Europe: agents won't appear there tomorrow. But it is worth preparing the feed now.
• Keep an eye on payments through Visa. When a purchase can be completed inside ChatGPT, the agent will stop being a lead generator and take over the entire funnel.
• Don't build your strategy on OpenAI analytics alone. The numbers in the beta dashboard show only mentions and clicks, not revenue.

The limitations of the beta are obvious: the US, ecommerce, closed conversations, unclear pricing. But the direction is clear. Brands will have to manage their presence in AI answers the same way they used to manage their listings in maps and search.