Best Buy customers can now discover products, get recommendations and complete purchases without leaving ChatGPT, under a commerce integration with OpenAI the retailer is promoting as part of its holiday plans.

"Customers can now discover products, receive recommendations and complete purchases for Best Buy directly within ChatGPT," Jason Bonfig, senior executive vice president, chief customer and product and fulfillment officer at Best Buy, told analysts on the retailer's Q2 earnings call in August. "We view this as an important step in expanding our digital ecosystem and positioning Best Buy at the forefront of emerging AI-enabled commerce experiences."

Bonfig is scheduled to replace Corie Barry as Best Buy's CEO on Nov. 1.

The OpenAI partnership is one strand of a broader AI push across Best Buy's operations in 2026. In March, speaking at the UBS Global Consumer and Retail Conference, Barry called AI "a huge enabler of growth" as well as "good employee experiences." Her remarks focused first on internal tools, but she also outlined use cases extending to customers.

An employee-built agent now handles marketing data

One internal tool came together fast. "I had an employee who — literally over the weekend — rewrote and created an agent for all of our employee tools," Barry said in March. The agent responds to text-based input and "now scrapes" information to improve its responses.

"Now our employees can ask very normal human questions like 'I'm new here, what are the forms I need to fill out?' and it's populating," she stated. "And then that agent will be able to repurpose to also start to solve customer support problems because it's not like you just write an agent and it only solves one thing."

Barry said the agent is already "solving customer problems," and its output has applications in marketing and audience segmentation.

"Some of our most powerful use cases are things like creating audiences, like I can take outside signals in data," she stated.

Best Buy feeds internal data into its AI solutions to inform how it targets those audiences. "Now I have LLMs that will mash all that data together and tell me exactly how to target someone," Barry said. "If they've been lapsed, I can pick them at just the right moment because I'm seeing the right demand signals, target them, and we're seeing improved — an improved ability to bring that customer back to the brand."

Ask Blue brings the website into one conversation

In August, Best Buy also rolled out its customer-facing shopping assistant, Ask Blue. Bonfig told analysts the tool consolidates multiple areas of expertise into a single shopper experience.

"Speaking of online experiences, I'm excited to announce the launch of Ask Blue, our new conversational AI shopping and support assistant," he said. "It brings together expertise from across Best Buy's website in one easy-to-use experience."

He characterized the assistant as added value for online shoppers.

"It combines product knowledge, support, resources, customer reviews, availability and pricing to help customers make informed decisions," he said. "Ask Blue will help customers figure out what tech is right for them."

Bonfig cited comparing products, identifying important differences, checking compatibility and getting additional support as example tasks. Support may include connecting the shopper with a human specialist.

On discovery beyond its own channels, Bonfig pointed to the AI partnerships. "We're also continuing to partner with AI companies like OpenAI to make sure we are showing up in the places where our customers look for technology and advice," he said.

Best Buy ranks No. 8 in the Digital Commerce 360 Top 1000 Database, which tracks North America's largest online retailers by annual ecommerce sales. The retailer also ranks No. 200 in Digital Commerce 360's AI Rankings, available in the Top 1000 Pro with AI Database.

With the ChatGPT integration positioned for holiday gift-buying and a leadership transition set for Nov. 1, Best Buy enters the peak season betting that agentic commerce and conversational AI become a measurable driver of its digital growth.