OpenAI Pivots Its E-Commerce Strategy Away from Instant Checkout Toward Retailer Apps
After Instant Checkout stumbled due to stale product data and limited merchant adoption, OpenAI is shifting to a model where purchases redirect to retailers' own websites via in-app browsers inside ChatGPT.
OpenAI is overhauling its e-commerce strategy after its initial foray into AI-powered shopping fell short of expectations, the company confirmed on Thursday. The pivot moves away from Instant Checkout — a feature launched last autumn that allowed users to purchase products from retailers like Etsy, Walmart, and Shopify directly inside ChatGPT — toward a system of dedicated retailer applications within the chatbot that direct buyers to merchants' own websites to complete transactions.
The change gives retailers greater control over the customer journey and access to shopper data earlier in the buying process. Analysts said the shift reflects OpenAI's recognition that Instant Checkout was more complicated to execute than anticipated.
Relying on web data to populate product information often yielded stale pricing, inaccurate stock availability, and incorrect shipping estimates. As of last month, only around 30 Shopify merchants were live inside Instant Checkout despite OpenAI's initial projection of reaching over a million merchants on the platform.
Under the new approach, OpenAI will work with retailers to build custom ChatGPT applications that give merchants direct control over product feeds and promotional data, ensuring accuracy while enabling purchases through an in-app browser. Shopify confirmed Thursday it is upgrading its ChatGPT experience under the new model and launching an Agentic Plan that allows merchants without a full Shopify storefront to list products across ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and other AI platforms.
Walmart, which had made approximately 200,000 products available in Instant Checkout, confirmed separately that it plans to integrate its Sparky AI assistant into ChatGPT under the new app-based framework.
The strategic shift comes as OpenAI faces intensifying competition from Google, which has moved quickly to build out its shopping agent platform with real-time product data, multi-item cart capabilities, and loyalty program integration. Retail analysts said no AI company has yet cracked the code on agentic commerce, and that the transition from AI-assisted discovery to AI-executed purchasing at scale will take years of iteration across the industry.
Read the original reporting at CNBC.
