CNBC | Friday, March 20, 2026 
OpenAI’s first crack at online shopping stumbled. It’s preparing for the next wave

When OpenAI announced its Instant Checkout feature last fall, retailers sprang into action. Etsy, Walmart and Shopify quickly lined up to let users buy merchants’ products directly within its ChatGPT chatbot. Suddenly, the e-commerce world was fixated on shopping agents, the artificial intelligence tools that can make purchases on behalf of users. Shopify President Harley Finkelstein called it the “new frontier” for online retail. Several months later, OpenAI and its retail partners have headed back to the drawing board. The AI startup is moving away from Instant Checkout and is now working with retailers to create dedicated apps within ChatGPT. This approach will reroute users to the retailer’s own website to complete a purchase, giving those companies more control of the customer experience and the transaction process. “OpenAI underestimated how difficult the enablement of transactions was going to be, which, on the one hand, is a little surprising, but on the other hand, it’s not easy for retailers,” Bob Hetu, an analyst at Gartner, told CNBC in an interview. An OpenAI spokesperson said it is prioritizing better search and product discovery in the chatbot, two areas where it has seen some early traction in user adoption. “Instant Checkout is moving to Apps, where purchases can happen more seamlessly,” an OpenAI spokesperson said…Read more