Websites are no longer the source of truth
People used to search, click a website and hunt for a phone number. Today the question gets answered before anyone reaches a website: on a map, in a review app, through a voice assistant, and more and more by an AI agent acting for the person. The moment of inquiry has moved into people’s hands, and it expects an answer now.
We build for that moment. Every business we serve gets a knowledge catalog — what it does, when it’s open, what it can take on today — and an AI storefront that answers from that catalog in real time, on the channels where people already ask. We call this pushing service-provider inference to the edge of inquiry: the answer, the booking and the payment all happen at the point of the question, backed by live data on who can actually help.
We don’t replace Google, Apple, Yelp or Trustpilot. We ride on top of them. That keeps this simple for a business owner to adopt, and it keeps us where the traffic already is.
Why this exists
In late 2025, at Google’s annual conference for builders and developers, one subject stood out from everything else on stage: knowledge catalogs, websites, and the future of search. AI search was already disrupting Google’s core business. AI results give people real answers and recommendations with no blue adverts beside them, inline, or anywhere else on the page.
The canary in the coal mine
One-click search gives users the answer they needed without a single click beyond the first. That is what makes AI-based search an existential problem for an advertising business.
The counter-punch
Google answered with knowledge-catalog-based search of its own. The pitch to small business owners is that they can build a catalog and bypass their own website — while Google still owns the data. Analytics already show one-click search rendering websites largely obsolete, and the inherent flaw is obvious: the data goes stale the moment a site is scraped.
Knowledge catalogs
Knowledge Catalogs launched a few years back as Dataplex Universal Catalogs. The landscape moved fast, and the rename came with a serious bet on AI-based local search. Our own knowledge catalog work was already well underway — for a completely different reason: to let a small business own its own data, no matter where or how it was created.
Maps AI Storefront was born
The major pivot was adding Maps capability. Storefront users can capture and inference every interaction with customers, drawing on their own knowledge catalog in real time to drive sales and engagement. Never again wonder whether a merchant takes credit cards, offers a particular service, or what they accept as collateral — the most obscure and nuanced exchanges between merchant and customer get captured, cataloged, and replayed at the point of inquiry, 24/7, 365.
The catalog also connects to an invite-only social layer, so further interaction with customers — feedback, reviews, muses and rants alike — is ingested straight back into each business’s catalog.
Agentic commerce, built in
We believe the answer to one-click search is an x402 agent-to-agent back door for agentic commerce. Merchants earn digital tokens based on who is buying the data. Businesses using the system are eligible to participate in — or opt out of — agent-to-agent commerce based on their own input. The more context a merchant provides, the more they can earn, rather than giving content away the way every social platform asks them to today.
Our firm belief is that websites will become mini search engines — mini LLMs. Because inference will be pervasive, companies won’t need to post consumable information at all, beyond photos of the company picnic. The important data will be searchable for inference at your fingertips, and real pricing becomes available once an agent’s intent is understood. We think the enormous data centers going up are not only for big-tech LLMs, but for small enterprises’ mini LLMs.
Maps AI Storefront is headed for Yelp, Bing, Google Maps, Apple Maps, Trustpilot and beyond. Any directory becomes a point of abstraction for a business, and any merchant can build a specialized mini LLM around the service they provide.
What’s live today
- Maps AI Storefront. AI answers a business’s calls 24/7, answers questions, and books an appointment in-call or texts a booking link. It deploys through the phone number on the Google Business Profile, so it works where customers already find the business.
- Maps AI Concierge. Premium real-time voice with very low latency, built for high-stakes calls. If usage runs past plan, it steps down to the standard experience instead of cutting off, so no lead is ever lost.
- The CRM. The lead and follow-up hub that sits behind every storefront.
- Associates and agency partners. An associate network built on a unilevel compensation plan, plus a white-label program for Google Business Profile and local SEO agencies.
- Payment rails (early). x402 and crypto payment rails are in place but not fully built out. Finishing them is a 2027 priority.