Packages move along a conveyor at an Amazon fulfillment center on Cyber Monday in Robbinsville, New Jersey, U.S., on Monday, Nov. 29, 2021.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Chad Rubin was looking for a way to spice up his Amazon listing for a vacuum hose. He was struggling to come up with a catchy title that would make shoppers want to click on his hose instead of the countless others in Amazon’s vast marketplace.
For assistance, Rubin turned to ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot that’s gone viral since its launch late last year. He soon began to experiment with the tool for completing tasks such as generating copy on his product page. Rubin asked ChatGPT to “generate 5 insanely clever and catchy headlines” for an infographic promoting his vacuum cleaner hose.
“Dirt destroying air flow,” he said, reading off one of ChatGPT’s responses. “I would have never in a million years thought of that for a vacuum hose.”
As ChatGPT rapidly finds its way into use by lawyers, clinicians, professors and their students, it’s also showing its utility in the business world, notably for Amazon sellers seeking the tiniest competitive advantage as they try to bolster sales. Third-party merchants who have embraced ChatGPT say it can make the job of selling on Amazon’s marketplace easier and more lucrative.
A stream of YouTube videos, articles and LinkedIn posts have appeared in recent months touting the benefits of ChatGPT for Amazon sellers. E-commerce software providers such as JungleScout have also jumped on the trend by integrating ChatGPT into their services.
“This is one of those technologies that is going to fundamentally change everything we do in our lives,” said JungleScout technology chief Stephen Curial, who previously spent a decade at Amazon in software development. “It’s that powerful.”
Curial said it won’t be long before generative AI tools such as ChatGPT become ordinary productivity aides, similar to calculators or spellcheck, helping busy businesspeople minimize daily grunt work.
Millions of people are using the free chatbot to do things such as write fiction, generate computer code and edit resumes. Microsoft has incorporated the technology into its Bing search engine, while Google introduced rival chatbot Bard last month.
Investors are pouring into the market with massive checks even as the broader tech startup market continues to suffer from the 2022 downturn. Last week, a 22-person pre-revenue startup called Character.AI, which was founded by two former Google employees, raised $150 million at a $1 billion valuation in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Hamza Amor, an Amazon seller and founder of e-commerce consulting firm Fussy Penguins, has posted TikTok videos showing how ChatGPT can help merchants discover their next hit product.
Amor started experimenting with ChatGPT in December, asking it questions such as “Tell me more about you” and “What is the meaning of life?” He then asked it to write small passages, such as a children’s story, and was impressed by the results.
ChatGPT helped him improve his products after he asked the chatbot to summarize what users like and dislike about an item based on a set of reviews. For an under-desk footrest, it suggested he use different packaging and more durable materials, or consider offering multiple sizes and the ability to adjust the height of the footrest.
‘It does it in seconds’
The software also assisted with the writing of a few listings, a process that normally requires hours of writing and editing.
“It does it with the tone you suggest, and it does it in seconds,” Amor said. “That’s the part that was mind-blowing.”
ChatGPT’s handiwork has already delivered results for some users. Rubin said the conversion rate, or the percentage of clicks on an ad that result in sales, went up for several of his vacuum filters, coffee filters and air filters after he used ChatGPT for help with listings. For one product, the conversion rate increased from an average of 26% to 46% over an eight-week period, he said.
Rubin sees the opportunity to further capitalize on the trend by giving other sellers a streamlined way to use it. That’s important because third-party sellers are often managing dozens, if not hundreds, of listings on Amazon at the same time and are competing with many new sellers every day.
In 2021, Rubin started a pricing software company called Profasee, which has used AI in some of its features. Rubin said he plans to incorporate ChatGPT into a new tool that will help sellers quickly fine-tune their product listings.
But despite the hype, there’s good reason for skepticism when it comes to ChatGPT’s effectiveness. The nascent technology has shown that it’s prone to making mistakes and, in some cases, just making stuff up. ChatGPT learns to write by analyzing large volumes of information from the internet, and it can get things wrong, a phenomenon that AI experts call “hallucination.”
Aidan Duffy, a seller who also runs a consulting firm, turned to ChatGPT to help improve the listing for a sauna backrest, one of his newer products. Not only did the chatbot assist with writing bullet points on the listing, it also suggested he create an adjustable backrest for taller or shorter users, which he said he considered having manufactured.
Still, Duffy said he has some concerns about the technology’s accuracy. He recently used it for advice on the best way to import products from China, where his items are manufactured.
“It came back with a readable answer, but I see it as a baseline,” Duffy said. “It won’t do your job for you.”
Software company ServiceNow is in advanced talks to buy cybersecurity startup Armis, which was last valued at $6.1 billion, Bloomberg reported.
The deal, which could reach $7 billion in value, would be ServiceNow’s largest acquisition, the outlet said, citing people familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.
The acquisition could be announced as soon as this week, but could still fall apart, according to the report.
Armis and ServiceNow did not immediately return a CNBC request for comment.
Armis, which helps companies secure and manage internet-connected devices and protect them against cyber threats, raised $435 million in a funding round just over a month ago and told CNBC about its eventual plans for an IPO.
Armis CEO Yevgeny Dibrov and CTO Nadir Izrael.
Courtesy: Armis
CEO and co-founder Yevgeny Dibrov said Armis was aiming for a public listing at the end of 2026 or early 2027, pending “market conditions.”
Armis’s decision to be acquired rather than wait for a public listing is a common path for startups at the moment. The IPO markets remain choppy and many startups are choosing to remain private for longer instead of risking a muted debut on the public markets.
Its latest funding round was led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives’ growth equity fund, with participation from CapitalG, a venture arm of Alphabet. Previous backers have included Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital Ventures.
The S & P 500 ran into a brick wall Friday and finished the week lower, just one day after closing at a record high. The rotation out of tech stocks, which supported the Dow , was on full display. The across-the-board rally on Wednesday after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the third time this year was long forgotten. .SPX .IXIC,.DJI 5D mountain S & P 500, Nasdaq and Dow last week For the week, the broad-market S & P 500 lost roughly 0.6%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 1.6%, breaking a two-week win streak. The sector shuffle that made materials, financials, and industrials weekly winners — and communications services and information technology weekly losers — pushed the Dow 1% higher last week, its third consecutive weekly gain. Despite December historically being a strong month, the S & P 500 and Nasdaq are down 0.3% and 0.7%, respectively. The Dow is up nearly 1.6%. Perhaps the big man will bail out Wall Street. The so-called Santa Claus rally , a seasonal pattern that occurs in the final five trading days of the year and the first two of the new year, would begin on Dec. 19. Until then, here are four significant moments that drove the market last week. 1. Broad(com) worries Friday’s market was slammed by tech selling, led by Broadcom ‘s 11.5% plunge. The chipmaker’s quarterly beat and raise on Thursday were overshadowed by misinterpreted remarks from management during the earnings call. The Broadcom hit stoked AI-stock valuation worries that have been simmering. During the sell-off on Friday morning, Jim Cramer said the custom chipmaker’s business was “on fire,” and that the decline could be a buying opportunity. Broadcom was our worst performer of the week, followed by Meta Platforms and Nvidia . 2. Tarnished Oracle The second session sell-off of Oracle on Friday didn’t help. The stock was crushed nearly 11% on Thursday following a quarterly sales miss, a disappointing guidance update, and an increased spending outlook. The magnitude of the stock decline was compounded by what management did not address on Wednesday evening’s conference call: OpenAI’s ability to fulfill its massive commitments to purchase AI computing power from Oracle. On Friday, shares sank another 4.5% after Bloomberg reported that Oracle was pushing back the completion dates for some data centers it is completing for OpenAI. Oracle pushed back , asserting “all milestones remain on track.” 3. Nvidia gets China OK While Nvidia caught shrapnel from AI trade worries, the all-purpose artificial intelligence chip king received long-awaited good news last week. After Monday’s close, President Donald Trump said on social media that Nvidia will be allowed to ship its second-best H200 chips to “approved customers in China,” and the U.S. government would take a 25% cut. Nvidia reached a deal in August with the U.S. government to provide 15% of made-for-China, throttled-down H20 sales in exchange for export licenses. It turns out China did not want the H20s. The question of whether China will want H200s was debated all week. 4. Powerful guidance On the industrial side of the AI trade, GE Vernova was our top performer despite Friday’s 4.6% decline. The energy equipment company, whose products and services help power AI data centers, closed at a record high Wednesday on incredibly positive guidance all the way out to fiscal 2028. CEO Scott Strazik, on CNBC, amplified the compelling near- and long-term growth story that management outlined at Tuesday evening’s investor meeting. On Wednesday, we raised our GE Vernova price target to $800 per share from $700, and reiterated our buy-equivalent 1 rating. The Honeywell spinoff, Solstice Advanced Materials , and Dover were also weekly winners. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long AVOG, META, NVDA, GEV, SOLS, DOV. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk appears on a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, on Sept. 23, 2025.
Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Oracle on Friday pushed back against a report that said the company will complete data centers for OpenAI, one of its major customers, in 2028, rather than 2027.
The delay is due to a shortage of labor and materials, according to the Friday report from Bloomberg, which cited unnamed people. Oracle shares fell to a session low of $185.98, down 6.5% from Thursday’s close.
“Site selection and delivery timelines were established in close coordination with OpenAI following execution of the agreement and were jointly agreed,” an Oracle spokesperson said in an email to CNBC. “There have been no delays to any sites required to meet our contractual commitments, and all milestones remain on track.”
The Oracle spokesperson did not specify a timeline for turning on cloud computing infrastructure for OpenAI. In September, OpenAI said it had a partnership with Oracle worth more than $300 billion over the next five years.
“We have a good relationship with OpenAI,” Clay Magouyrk, one of Oracle’s two newly appointed CEOs, said at an October analyst meeting.
Doing business with OpenAI is relatively new to 48-year-old Oracle. Historically, Oracle grew through sales of its database software and business applications. Its cloud infrastructure business now contributes over one-fourth of revenue, although Oracle remains a smaller hyperscaler than Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
OpenAI has also made commitments to other companies as it looks to meet expected capacity needs.
In September, Nvidia said it had signed a letter of intent with OpenAI to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia equipment for the San Francisco artificial intelligence startup. The first phase of that project is expected in the second half of 2026.
Nvidia and OpenAI said in a September statement that they “look forward to finalizing the details of this new phase of strategic partnership in the coming weeks.”
But no announcement has come yet.
In a November filing, Nvidia said “there is no assurance that we will enter into definitive agreements with respect to the OpenAI opportunity.”
OpenAI has historically relied on Nvidia graphics processing units to operate ChatGPT and other products, and now it’s also looking at designing custom chips in a collaboration with Broadcom.
On Thursday, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan laid out a timeline for the OpenAI work, which was announced in October. Broadcom and OpenAI said they had signed a term sheet.
“It’s more like 2027, 2028, 2029, 10 gigawatts, that was the OpenAI discussion,” Tan said on Broadcom’s earnings call. “And that’s, I call it, an agreement, an alignment of where we’re headed with respect to a very respected and valued customer, OpenAI. But we do not expect much in 2026.”