ChatGPT launches Business Hub with free business agents for US brands

2 hours ago

7 min read

OpenAI launched Business Hub for ChatGPT on November 10, 2026, a self-service beta in which companies can claim a business profile, get it verified, correct the information ChatGPT uses about them and, if they qualify, launch a dedicated business agent that talks to shoppers on their behalf inside ChatGPT. The company announced the program in an official post titled "Introducing Businesses in ChatGPT", and Benji Shomair, OpenAI's vice president of monetization, described its terms in interviews on the day of the launch.

The agent part of the program is narrower than the profile part. OpenAI said business agents are available, for now, only to e-commerce and online services businesses in the United States, while profiles can be created without building an agent. Shomair declined to give a timeline for a wider rollout and said that features for particular kinds of companies, such as multi-unit businesses, will be built out over time.

Both Business Hub and business agents are free at launch. OpenAI described the business agent as the organic counterpart of the paid Sponsored Agents format it began testing with advertisers in September, and Shomair said the two run on the same underlying agent. He did not rule out charging for the program in the future.

The hub also includes an analytics beta called Insights, which reports mentions, views, website clicks and the discovery topics that lead ChatGPT to surface a business, without exposing individual prompts or conversations.

··········

CHATGPT BUSINESS HUB: PROFILES, VERIFICATION AND PRODUCT DATA.

OpenAI describes Business Hub as "a self-service way for businesses to contribute their business information to ChatGPT." The entry point is a business profile. A company claims the profile, goes through verification and, once verified, can update its business details and product information. For merchants, the product information takes the form of a product feed, which becomes one of the inputs ChatGPT and the business agent draw on when a user asks about the company's catalog.

Verification is the gate for everything beyond a basic claim. Shomair said verification methods differ by industry, and OpenAI has chosen not to publish the exact criteria. A company that wants to know in advance whether it will pass therefore has no public checklist to work from, which is a practical limitation for agencies that manage listings for many clients.

The profile and the agent are separate decisions. A brand can create and verify a profile, keep its information current and use the analytics without ever launching an agent. For local businesses, that profile-only route is the only part of the program open to them at launch, because the agent beta is limited to US e-commerce and online services.

··········

HOW CHATGPT BUSINESS AGENTS WORK FOR SHOPPERS.

A business agent appears when an eligible brand shows up in an ordinary ChatGPT search or recommendation answer. From there, the user can open a conversation with that brand's agent to evaluate products, ask follow-up questions and compare items in the catalog. When the shopper is ready to buy, the agent sends them to the brand's own website to complete the purchase, so the transaction itself does not take place inside the agent.

OpenAI said each brand conversation is kept separate from the user's main ChatGPT thread and carries a visible label identifying it as a business agent. Merchants shape the agent with custom instructions and business context documents, and the agent is built from those instructions together with the company's product feed. Brands cannot plug in an agent they built elsewhere. "We aren't allowing folks to bring their own agents," Shomair said.

........

Element	What OpenAI says it does	Status at launch
Business profile	Claim, verify and correct company details	Beta, profiles do not require an agent
Product feed	Supplies catalog data after verification	Beta, for verified businesses
Business agent	Labeled brand chat opened from ChatGPT answers	Beta, US e-commerce and online services
Insights	Mentions, views, clicks and discovery topics	Beta, aggregated data only
Price	No charge for hub or agents	Free, future paid model not ruled out

........

··········

WHO CAN USE CHATGPT BUSINESS HUB AND BUSINESS AGENTS NOW.

The eligibility picture splits along two lines: the type of business and its location. A US online store or a US online services company can, after verification, use every component of the beta, including the agent. A US business that sells mainly through physical locations can work on its profile and read Insights, but OpenAI has not said when agents will open to it. For companies in other countries, agents are not available, and OpenAI has not detailed how profiles and Insights apply to them.

........

Business type	Profile and verification	Business agent	Insights
US e-commerce brand	Yes	Yes, beta	Yes, beta
US online services business	Yes	Yes, beta	Yes, beta
US local business	Yes	No date given	Yes, mentions by location
Business outside the US	Not detailed by OpenAI	Not available	Not detailed by OpenAI

........

For a brand that qualifies, the practical sequence follows from the way OpenAI has described the hub. The first step is claiming the profile and completing verification, since nothing else can be edited before that. The second is cleaning up the business details and connecting an accurate product feed, because the agent answers from that feed and from the instructions the brand writes. The third is drafting the agent's instructions and context documents with the same care as customer-facing copy: the agent speaks for the company inside a labeled chat, and its answers about prices, stock, shipping or returns should match what the website says when the shopper clicks through. The last step is reading Insights over time to see which discovery topics bring the brand into ChatGPT answers.

Companies that already advertise in ChatGPT will recognize the agent format from the paid test. Our earlier report on OpenAI's Sponsored Agents test and its new advertiser tools covers the ad-side version, including how sponsored conversations are kept apart from ChatGPT's own answers.

··········

CHATGPT BUSINESS AGENTS VERSUS SPONSORED AGENTS.

The free business agent and the paid sponsored agent share their underlying technology, according to Shomair, and differ in how the user reaches them. A business agent is opened from an organic ChatGPT answer in which the brand already appears. A sponsored agent is opened from a paid ad placement, so the advertiser pays for the exposure that leads to the conversation. Shomair said early tests of sponsored agents showed "promising results," particularly in how deep the conversations went.

........

Experience	How the user gets there	Who pays	Effect on ChatGPT answers
Standard ChatGPT answer	Any search or recommendation request	Nobody	Independent response
Business agent	Brand appears in an organic answer	Free at launch	Separate labeled chat
Sponsored agent	User opens it from a paid ad	Advertiser	Separate labeled chat

........

The overlap creates an obvious commercial path for OpenAI. A brand that builds a good business agent for free already has the asset it would need to run sponsored agents, and the company has confirmed both formats sit on the same agent. That makes the free program a low-friction way to bring merchants into the system that the advertising business monetizes, although OpenAI has not described it in those terms.

··········

WHAT BUSINESS HUB INSIGHTS MEASURE AND WHAT THEY HIDE.

The Insights beta is the part of Business Hub that any verified company can use from the first day, and OpenAI has defined its metrics more precisely than the rest of the program. A mention does not mean that ChatGPT simply typed the brand's name. For local businesses, a mention is counted when ChatGPT shows a result for the business's location. For online businesses, it is counted when ChatGPT references the company's website.

........

Insights metric	Definition given by OpenAI	Limitation
Mentions	Location result shown, or website referenced	Brand name alone does not count
Views	Reported in Insights, not further defined	Low counts may be withheld
Website clicks	Clicks on links from supported ChatGPT surfaces	Not visits or purchases
Discovery topics	Themes of conversations that surface the brand	No individual prompts or chats

........

The privacy boundary is strict on the brand side. OpenAI keeps full transcripts of agent conversations, while businesses receive only the themes of the conversations in which they appear and cannot see individual prompts or chats. Share of voice against competitors is not part of Insights, and OpenAI may withhold counts when volumes are low. The company has not said how far back the mention data goes; one advertising executive with access said the chart covers the past seven or 28 days, which OpenAI has not confirmed.

For marketing teams, the click metric needs careful handling in reporting. OpenAI counts clicks on links from supported ChatGPT surfaces, which is different from sessions recorded by the brand's own analytics and different again from completed purchases. Matching the two will require tagged landing pages or similar tracking on the website side.

··········

CHATGPT BUSINESS HUB AND RECOMMENDATIONS: CONFIRMED FACTS AND OPEN QUESTIONS.

OpenAI's statements establish the structure of the program: a free beta, profiles that any business can claim and verify, product feeds for verified companies, labeled business agents limited for now to US e-commerce and online services, and an Insights dashboard built on aggregated data. The company has also confirmed that business agents and sponsored agents share the same underlying agent and that brands cannot connect their own externally built agents.

The most sensitive question is whether taking part changes how often a business is recommended. Shomair said that the business agent and Business Hub do not affect ranking, that joining "should not have an impact" on how often a company appears and that ChatGPT has to "maintain objectivity." He also said the business data could help ChatGPT surface a company in more relevant conversations, which leaves room for indirect effects through better product information even if no ranking boost is applied.

Several points remain undisclosed: the verification criteria for each industry, the date when agents will reach local businesses and companies outside the United States, how long Insights retains mention data and whether the hub will stay free. Until OpenAI documents those details, Business Hub is best treated as a free way for US online sellers to correct their ChatGPT presence and test a branded agent, with pricing and international availability still to be set.

··········

·····

DATA STUDIOS

·····

datastudios.org