{"id":206958,"date":"2025-10-07T14:32:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T14:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/206958\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T14:32:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T14:32:07","slug":"openai-and-the-race-for-ai-driven-commerce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/206958\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI and the race for AI-driven commerce"},"content":{"rendered":"

OpenAI held its annual dev day on Monday<\/a>, where the company rolled out its plan to build apps into ChatGPT<\/a>. The demo was impressive, showing how programs like Spotify and Figma can be called or discovered without leaving the ChatGPT window. With so much of the tech world barreling towards AI integration, OpenAI\u2019s demo was the best picture yet of what an AI-first internet might actually look like, with interfaces like ChatGPT querying information and executing commands directly.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re watching closely, you may have noticed that there\u2019s a lot of room in this system for money to change hands. Just last week, the company launched Instant Checkout, an agentic shopping system<\/a> that serves as payment infrastructure for one-off purchases, plugging in any stores that sell through Shopify, Etsy or Stripe. Now, apps provides the front-end infrastructure, letting service providers build their own interface into ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

In short, OpenAI now has all the pieces in place for AI-driven commerce, establishing ChatGPT as a place customers go to buy and retailers go to sell. It\u2019s a huge new line of business for the company \u2014 and one with huge implications for the tech industry. In this world, OpenAI\u2019s isn\u2019t just competing with Google and Anthropic, but with Amazon and Wal-Mart. <\/p>\n

If you look at OpenAI\u2019s pending app partners in the launch announcement<\/a>, you can see how far the vision reaches. ChatGPT will be able to call you a cab through Uber, book a trip on Expedia, call a plumber or locksmith through Thumbtack, order groceries from Instacart, prepared food from Doordash, or big-box goods from Target. Without too much more work, ChatGPT could become a portal for most of its users\u2019 discretionary spending.<\/p>\n

If it works, this would be worth a lot more than just a $20-a-month subscription. The precise terms of the arrangement are still unclear, but like any app store, OpenAI is well positioned to get a portion of any money spent on its platform. ChatGPT is also recommending products, drawing on its wealth of data about its users, which tips the balance of power between OpenAI and retailers even more. In Ben Thompson\u2019s terms<\/a>, ChatGPT becomes a super-aggregator, funneling customers to retailers and providing an entry point for ever-larger amounts of commerce. OpenAI has lots of potential lines of business to pursue, but it\u2019s no exaggeration to say that AI-driven commerce is one of the most lucrative options.<\/p>\n

OpenAI isn\u2019t the only company with an eye on this prospect. On the same day as the ChatGPT announcement, Adobe released a report<\/a> predicting that this year\u2019s holiday would be dominated by AI-assisted shopping, with shoppers turning to chatbots instead of search engines to find the best deals available. A separate report from Mastercard<\/a> dubbed agentic commerce as a \u201cnew competitive arena\u201d for finance. Google has already launched its own competing protocol for agentic commerce<\/a> called AP2, which arrives with a broader scope but less momentum than OpenAI\u2019s version.<\/p>\n

The simplest version of AI-driven shopping is using ChatGPT to find products in place of search: if you\u2019re looking for a canvas tennis shoe under $80, ChatGPT can find it for you just as easily as Google Search. But AI systems don\u2019t need to be passive. The AP2 specification includes a provision for agent-initiated purchases, if you want an agent to buy concert tickets as soon as they become available, say, or book a flight as soon as it falls below a certain price. Of course, there could be agents on the other side of the transaction too, negotiating with purchasing agents for the best deal, and willing to bundle goods under the right circumstances. If retailers and customers are willing to take the leap, the changes could extend pretty far beyond a simple \u201cbuy\u201d button.<\/p>\n

Techcrunch event<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t|
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 27-29, 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The biggest unanswered question is whether the shopping public will actually be interested. AI shopping is obviously attractive to OpenAI, and companies like Stripe and Mastercard see plenty of benefit in it too \u2014 but users haven\u2019t shown much interest in agentic shopping systems beyond simple product searches. But then, they haven\u2019t had a chance to; these systems aren\u2019t even properly available now, and it will be months before the average user can try out a fully agentic shopping system.<\/p>\n

When they finally do, there will be a lot riding on how they react.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OpenAI held its annual dev day on Monday, where the company rolled out its plan to build apps…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[111428,182,118835,181,507,3195,1283,74],"class_list":["post-206958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-agentic-commerce","tag-ai","tag-ai-driven-commerce","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-chatgpt","tag-openai","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}