Businesses in ChatGPT: Business Hub and Business Agents

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OpenAI opened Businesses in ChatGPT in beta on November 10, 2026. Businesses can now claim a verified ChatGPT profile, publish self-service product feeds, and read aggregated insights on how people engage with them - and eligible US ecommerce and online service businesses can launch a Business Agent that answers customer questions inside ChatGPT.

Claiming a business profile

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The entry point is Business Hub, where a company claims its organisation in ChatGPT and, once verified, can update key details and add self-service product feeds with pricing and availability. The stated aim is straightforward: give ChatGPT accurate, current information so people can explore products and services without stale or wrong details.

Any eligible business located where ChatGPT is available can claim. Existing OpenAI Enterprise customers and advertisers work directly through their OpenAI representative, and Shopify merchants can connect their store from Business Hub or from the Shopify admin. Products from Shopify merchants are already integrated into ChatGPT through the Shopify Catalog.

The policy underneath is strict about representation. You may manage a profile only for a business you own or are authorised to represent, and OpenAI's Businesses in ChatGPT policy says plainly that businesses remain responsible for the information they provide even though OpenAI does not verify every detail or resolve every factual dispute. Eligibility is also not universal: OpenAI may decline a request or hold off on letting certain categories claim a profile until it has the safeguards to support them responsibly.

The insights dashboard

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Business Hub also gives businesses a view of how they are being represented: the number of mentions and website clicks a business receives, plus discovery topics - the common themes across conversations where their website was cited.

The privacy design is the part worth copying. OpenAI says it does not share users' conversations or Business Agent chats with businesses, and the insights are aggregated and only released once there are enough conversations or interactions to clear defined thresholds. For a reader who wants the fuller picture of how these assistant surfaces work, our Google AI Mode at a billion users guide covers the search-side equivalent.

Discovery topics are the genuinely useful metric. Mentions and clicks tell you whether you are showing up; discovery topics tell you why - which themes your content is being attached to. That is closer to a search-console query report than to a vanity counter, and it gives you a concrete list of content gaps to close.

Business Agents: your own agent inside ChatGPT

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The bigger launch is the Business Agent. When a business appears in a model response, people can click through to its ChatGPT profile, and if a Business Agent is available, the customer can start a conversation with it - a separate, clearly labelled chat that sits alongside the customer's own conversation and stays distinct from ChatGPT's independent answers.

The stated use case is comparison and qualification: someone weighing two products can ask about the differences and which features fit their needs, and the Business Agent answers using the business's own information. Businesses can build, test and launch these agents through Business Hub.

Two constraints matter if you are considering it. First, Business Agents are currently limited to eligible ecommerce and online service businesses in the United States, and the Business Agents Policy explicitly states that business verification alone does not guarantee agent eligibility - OpenAI considers both the category and the agent's intended use before allowing publication. Second, the policy draws a hard line around advice that legally requires a professional licence, automated high-stakes decisions without human review, and claimed professional credentials. The agent may explain offerings and provide general information; it is not a replacement for regulated advice.

Sponsored Business Agents

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Businesses can sponsor their Business Agent and use it as the destination for ChatGPT Ads. Sponsored placements are clearly labelled and kept separate from ChatGPT responses, and the same separation applies to the Business Agent conversation itself.

This is the continuation of a line OpenAI started in September 2026 with Sponsored Agents in ChatGPT Ads - the idea that an ad can hand off to a business-sponsored agent for a deeper conversation, rather than a landing page. The practical difference now is ownership: with Business Hub, the business controls the agent's instructions and information rather than only the campaign. The always-on agent side of the same push is covered in our guide to OpenAI Dots.

What the rules mean for you

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The Business Agents Policy, updated November 10, is unusually concrete, and it reads like a checklist for anyone who will run one of these agents.

• Be honest about what the agent is. It must be clear that it is AI representing the business, and must not appear to be an independent adviser, a human, or endorsed by OpenAI.
• Keep the information current. Do not instruct the agent to invent offerings, prices, availability, credentials, reviews, guarantees or results, and do not hide material fees or conditions when they matter to the question.
• Do not pressure users. Agents may not create false urgency, exploit vulnerability, keep pushing a sale after a user declines, or collect high-risk personal data such as health details, government IDs or financial credentials.
• Do not act without authorisation. An agent may not submit a form, booking or purchase on the user's behalf without explicit authorisation through an approved feature.

Enforcement is real: OpenAI may suspend or remove an agent, limit features, or restrict the business's ability to manage agents, especially for serious or repeated breaches.

Is this worth doing now?

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If your business is eligible in the US and sells online, the practical case is a distribution channel that your competitors do not yet occupy - a claimable profile, structured product feeds, discovery-topic data on what people ask about you, and an agent that answers pre-sale questions in the assistant where the decision is being made. If you sell offline services, claim the profile now: the insights and the discovery topics are available well beyond the ecommerce categories, and they tell you what your content is missing.

The caution is that this is a beta with real limits - US-only agents, category gates, and no Business Agent pricing model published in the launch announcement, plus a policy surface that can change. Treat the profile and the feed as the durable investment, the insights as your measurement layer, and the Business Agent as an experiment until the eligibility rules widen.

Prices and benchmark figures are standard published rates as of November 13, 2026 and can change without notice. Some outbound links may be affiliate links — see our disclosure. Found an error? Tell us and we'll correct it in public.