In less than 6 months from announcing Instant Checkout, OpenAI is reportedly scaling back…

In less than 6 months from announcing Instant Checkout, OpenAI is reportedly scaling back checkout and sending buyers back to merchant sites.

Is anyone surprised? We have already seen the same with Meta, Facebook, TikTok Shops.

Discovery is the easy part. Commerce infrastructure is hard.

Payments, fulfillment, returns, tax, customer history, inventory, accounting. That stack already lives with merchants.

Which is why: Shopify is not going away. Ecommerce storefronts are not going away. SMBs selling online are not going away.

AI will reshape product discovery for sure as it's changing search broadly. But sellers already have the infrastructure they need to sell and buyers already have the most convenient checkout options at their finger-tips.

Already seeing people like Jake Bengtzen at Redo thinking about commerce AEO and AI-powered site search. That's the right move. Augment the existing infrastructure, don't try to replace it.

The merchants already have the commerce stack, the customers, and the trust. Bring them the AI layer they're missing.

That's where the real opportunity is.

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