OpenAI has given companies a formal presence inside ChatGPT8.4 out of 10. On Tuesday, November 10, it launched Businesses in ChatGPT in beta, a program that lets businesses claim a profile, manage the information ChatGPT shows about them and, in some cases, put their own AI agent in front of customers. “Claim your business, manage your information, and get insights on how people engage with you,” OpenAI wrote in its announcement on X.
Profiles and the Business Hub
The program is built around a dashboard called Business Hub. After claiming a listing — which requires the business to have a website — owners can update their details and product feeds and view aggregated insights on how people engage with them in ChatGPT, including mentions, profile views, website clicks and the discovery topics behind conversations that cite their site. TechCrunch compares the move to a business profile on Google.
The data has clear limits. Insights are only shown once conversation volumes pass privacy thresholds, figures cover ChatGPT alone, and businesses cannot see the prompts that surfaced them. OpenAI says businesses do not get access to users’ ChatGPT conversations or their chats with a Business Agent.
Business Agents
Claiming a profile also unlocks the more agent-like part of the launch. Eligible businesses can build, test and publish a Business Agent that answers customer questions and helps people explore products, drawing on guidelines and product information the business controls. When a business appears in a ChatGPT answer, a user can open its profile and choose to chat with the agent; those conversations are labelled and kept separate from ChatGPT’s own responses.
For now, Business Agents are limited to eligible ecommerce and online-service businesses in the US, and OpenAI says it plans to expand to more markets and categories. Businesses can also sponsor their agent and use it as the destination for ChatGPT Ads, building on the Sponsored Agents ad format OpenAI has been testing with select US advertisers. According to reporting on the launch, OpenAI says paying for ads does not change how often ChatGPT recommends a business.
Why it matters
The launch turns ChatGPT from a place where brands are discussed into one where they can act directly, with their own agent in the conversation. It also puts OpenAI in competition with the growing set of “generative engine optimization” startups that sell AI-visibility tracking. Questions remain about how agent answers will be checked for accuracy and how clearly users will distinguish sponsored agents from ChatGPT’s independent recommendations as the beta widens.