On AI distribution and the future of services.
Shopify just gave millions of merchants a dashboard to measure sales from ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot. It is a strong sign that AI is now a real, measurable distribution channel. But the tools are built for products with a SKU. Services that sell a quote, not a product, get the signal and none of the tooling.
Waniwani has raised $8M in seed funding led by Seedcamp to build the revenue and compliance infrastructure for the agentic distribution of financial services.
Fintonic launches a ChatGPT app experience for personal loan discovery and simulations, powered by Waniwani's AI distribution infrastructure.
55% of US consumers already asked AI for financial advice in 2026. Now ChatGPT lets them connect bank accounts from 12,000+ institutions. For financial services vendors, AI is no longer just a discovery channel. It's becoming the primary interface for financial decisions.
ChatGPT built a store. Claude built a recommendation engine. The user does not browse Claude's directory; Claude reads the conversation and surfaces the right connector itself. That design choice rewrites the distribution rules for any business selling through AI. The reason Claude's mechanic feels mature has one structural answer: its consumer surface grew out of coding.
Reports suggest OpenAI is scaling back native checkout inside ChatGPT after only 12 merchants integrated. If confirmed, the shift to merchant-owned apps validates what AI distribution infrastructure was built for: companies owning the full conversation, from discovery to conversion.
OpenAI has approved Tuio's AI-powered insurance application on ChatGPT, built on Waniwani's infrastructure — enabling users to get personalized home insurance quotes directly within the AI assistant.