Pacvue Preps Role in OpenAI’s Emerging Retail Ecosystem
How consumers discover products has fundamentally shifted, and Pacvue is planting its flag as a key player in social and conversational commerce to meet them there.
This means the company is focusing on extending both horizontally and vertically, Rahul Choraria, Pacvue CEO, told the Path to Purchase Institute during Groceryshop last month — the same day that OpenAI announced that consumers would be able to purchase directly from Etsy in ChatGPT.
Also announced: More than a million Shopify merchants, including Vuori, Glossier and Skims, will become available on OpenAI, and OpenAI will open-source its Instant Checkout technology so it can be integrated within other platforms.
While much, much, much debate surrounds the potential of scalable agentic commerce, conversational commerce will nonetheless dominate the retail media conversation in 2026, Choraria stressed.
"It's only a matter of time before more retailers and ecosystems connect into [OpenAI]," he said. "Once Checkout starts there, the media side will follow, because it's going to be more important for you as a brand to be discovered."
Pacvue is currently exploring how it can power searches on OpenAI and Perplexity that drive conversions, as well as enable advertising on those platforms.
"Brands already using our platform to advertise can now become another surface" with OpenAI, he said.
Although it remains to be seen what ads could and would look like on OpenAI, this uncertainty also presents an opportunity to shape the experience, said Choraria, noting that Pacvue aims to be the first company to connect into a potential OpenAI ad infrastructure.
"Do we work with them early enough to shape new ad creative types that don't create that disjointed experience in the LLMs like you have in Google?"
Vertical integration is similarly a key priority for Pacvue because brands are pushing to tie off-site, upper-funnel advertising to the bottom line, said Choraria, who was named CEO last year.
The company expanded access to its Amazon DSP tools earlier this year — one of the fastest-growing parts of its business — and is working on integrating directly with The Trade Desk, with a launch expected next quarter.
Pacvue will also continue to extend its offerings on TikTok, Choraria said. The company launched an integration for TikTok in June that enables brands to manage TikTok Shop accounts and Shop Ads campaigns.
"We are going to make a big shift in that direction, so now we've both got the horizontal coverage and the vertical, full-funnel coverage that extends us from a tool to a platform.”
