Is OpenAI Entering Its E-Commerce Era? — What Sales Tax, Payments, and a Trillion-Dollar Market Mean

OpenAI's E-Commerce Entry Moves from "Exploration" to "Implementation"

Is OpenAI entering its e-commerce era?

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On February 11, 2026, a Tech Brew article revealed that OpenAI's entry into e-commerce has moved beyond the "exploration stage" into "implementation." Citing The Information's reporting, it exposed OpenAI's sales tax compliance challenges and plans to diversify payment processing away from Stripe dependency (announcement expected by end of March 2026). Starting with Etsy integration in September 2025, OpenAI has rapidly expanded partnerships with Shopify and Walmart, transforming ChatGPT from a simple chatbot into an e-commerce transaction platform.

Background and Industry Context

Two powerful motivations drive OpenAI's serious push into e-commerce.

First, the need for new revenue sources to offset massive losses. According to Tech Brew's article, OpenAI projects billions of dollars in losses for this fiscal year alone. With subscription revenue insufficient to fund growth investments, converting ChatGPT's 800 million weekly active users into commercial transactions is an entirely rational strategy. Internal documents leaked in April 2026 revealed projections of $1 billion in 2026 and $25 billion by 2029 from "free user monetization" (effectively advertising and commerce revenue).

Second, the rapid expansion of the agentic commerce market itself. A report published by McKinsey in October 2025 predicts that agentic commerce — where AI agents discover, compare, and purchase products on behalf of consumers — could reach up to $1 trillion in the US B2C retail market alone by 2030, and $3–5 trillion globally. McKinsey notes this transformation is "faster than the adoption of the internet or smartphones" because it can leverage existing digital infrastructure without building from scratch.

How Instant Checkout Works and the Rapidly Expanding Partner Network

At the core of OpenAI's e-commerce strategy is "Instant Checkout," announced jointly with Stripe on September 29, 2025, and its underlying Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP).

With Instant Checkout, when users discover products during ChatGPT conversations, they can complete purchases by simply tapping the "Buy" button without leaving the chat. Product recommendations are ranked purely by relevance to the user, not sponsored. According to OpenAI's official announcement, orders, payments, and shipping are processed by merchants' existing systems, with ChatGPT serving as a "digital personal shopper" that mediates information.

The speed of partner network expansion is remarkable:

• September 2025: Launched with US Etsy sellers. Etsy stock rose 16%
• September–October 2025: Announced expansion to over 1 million Shopify merchants including Glossier, SKIMS, Spanx, and Vuori
• October 14, 2025: Walmart announced participation, connecting its entire product catalog to ChatGPT's Instant Checkout. WMT stock rose 5% to a record high

A key feature of ACP is that it's an open standard. Even merchants not using Stripe for payment processing can participate using their existing payment providers. Stripe's "Shared Payment Token API" and "Delegated Payments Spec" enable integration with non-Stripe PSPs with just one line of code.

Two Challenges Facing OpenAI — Sales Tax and Payment Diversification

As Tech Brew's article points out, OpenAI's full-scale e-commerce entry still has unresolved challenges.

Sales tax compliance is the most complex issue. With sales tax rules varying by state in the US, it remains unclear whether OpenAI bears sales tax collection obligations as a "marketplace facilitator" or whether merchants handle it. Under the current ACP framework, Stripe's explanation indicates that merchants serve as the "merchant of record" responsible for calculating and collecting sales tax. However, as transaction volumes grow, state regulators may classify OpenAI as a marketplace facilitator.

Payment processing diversification is also underway. According to The Information, OpenAI plans to restructure its credit card data management currently dependent on Stripe and announce distribution across multiple payment providers by end of March 2026. This reflects not only risk diversification but also the strategic intent to strengthen negotiating power on payment processing fees.

Three-Way Competition — Google, Meta, and OpenAI

OpenAI's e-commerce entry isn't happening in a vacuum. Tech giants are fiercely competing for agentic commerce dominance.

Google announced Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience at NRF 2026 in January. In addition to multimodal shopping agents processing text, voice, and images, Google released the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) co-developed with Shopify. Over 20 companies including Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target, Walmart, Visa, Stripe, and PayPal have joined. Direct checkout within Google Search's AI Mode and the Gemini app is also planned.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has positioned "AI-driven commerce" as a 2026 priority area, stating plans to deploy shopping agents.

This three-way competition forces e-commerce businesses to make new choices about which platforms to support. However, both ACP and UCP are designed as open standards, and systems like Shopify's "Agentic Storefronts" that enable one-time setup for deployment across multiple AI platforms are being developed.

Impact and Action Items for E-Commerce Businesses

What OpenAI's full-scale e-commerce entry confronts businesses with is a new survival requirement: "Do you have sales channels through AI agents?"

First, building AI agent-compatible payment and product data infrastructure. Shopify merchants should activate "Agentic Storefronts" and begin deployment across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Microsoft Copilot. For custom e-commerce platforms, consider API integration with ACP and UCP.

Second, structuring and optimizing product data. In a system where AI agents rank products by "relevance" rather than sponsorship, the quality of product names, descriptions, categories, and attribute data directly impacts AI recommendation accuracy. McKinsey's research shows that AI-generated product recommendations achieve 4.4x the conversion rate compared to traditional search.

Additionally, verifying sales tax and compliance is important. When merchants serve as the "merchant of record" for AI agent-facilitated transactions, existing sales tax processing flows apply. However, as cross-state transactions increase, reviewing Nexus (conditions triggering tax obligations) may become necessary.

Summary

The answer to Tech Brew's question "Is OpenAI entering its e-commerce era?" is already clear. Partnerships with Etsy, Shopify, and Walmart, the establishment of ACP as an open standard, and efforts on sales tax and payment diversification demonstrate that OpenAI views e-commerce not as an "experiment" but as a "pillar of its business." McKinsey's prediction of a trillion-dollar market and the three-way competition with Google and Meta confirm that this trend is not transient. For e-commerce businesses, adapting to AI agent-powered sales channels has moved beyond being an "advanced initiative" to becoming "basic infrastructure development."