AI Radar for Companies — Thursday, November 5, 2026
· CompaniesAutomation
OpenAI says ChatGPT runs 1 search per 5 on Google, Dialpad merges with Ada, valued near $430M, and only 10% of companies let agents decide without approval.
OpenAI says ChatGPT now runs one search for every five on Google, and even though that's its own number, it's a good reason to check whether your company shows up when a customer asks there. Money keeps reshaping AI customer service: Dialpad is merging with Ada, once worth $1.2 billion and now valued at about $430 million. And two data points cool the excitement: only 10% of companies let agents decide without approval across several areas, and Canva is cutting 22% of its roles after running over budget on AI. This follows Wednesday's radar.
ChatGPT now runs one search for every five on Google, OpenAI says: check whether your company shows up
Adam Fry, who leads consumer ChatGPT at OpenAI, said in an interview with Alex Kantrowitz released Tuesday that ChatGPT's volume of search-like queries is now "roughly one-fifth" of Google's, and that the product went from 1 billion to 1.2 billion weekly users in two months. A search, by his count, is any question that sends ChatGPT out to the web, and he pointed mainly to people, places, finance and health. Treat it as a company figure: it doesn't measure visits or sales, and Google says its own search volume is at an all-time high. For your company: write down ten questions a customer would ask before buying from you, using your city and their real problem. Ask ChatGPT, then note whether you show up, what it says about you and which pages it pulls from. Repeat it monthly on the same sheet, because answers vary and the trend is what counts. If you're missing or the answer is wrong, don't pay for any "ChatGPT ranking" service yet: put your prices, service areas, lead times and case studies on open pages, and make sure your robots.txt doesn't block OAI-SearchBot, the search crawler OpenAI keeps separate from the one it uses for training. It's the same lesson Pipedrive left us this week: AI is changing how customers find you. Source
Dialpad merges with Ada, once worth $1.2 billion and now valued at about $430 million: AI customer service is consolidating
Dialpad, which sells business phone and contact center software, and Ada, which builds AI customer service agents, announced Wednesday that they're combining, with closing expected around November 12. The companies didn't disclose terms, but The Globe and Mail, citing two sources, reports an all-share deal that values Ada at about $430 million, down from $1.2 billion in its pandemic-era funding round, with annual revenue of about $50 million. Together they count more than 50,000 customers, and the deal lands the same week Salesforce agreed to buy Cresta. The announcement says customers keep their current contracts, pricing, account teams and integrations, without saying for how long, and leaves the roadmap for "the coming months." For your company: being early doesn't protect a vendor. Ada was founded in 2016 and still grew more slowly than its fastest rivals. If your chatbot or voice agent comes from an independent vendor, ask in writing how long pricing and integrations are guaranteed, and export your scripts, knowledge base and conversation history now in a format another system can read. Also list the real actions it performs, like changing a booking or issuing a refund: that's what you'd have to rebuild if you switch. Source and Source
Only 10% let agents decide without approval, and a low bill can hide the failure
A Tata Consultancy Services study published Wednesday, covering 1,333 executives in 25 countries and 12 industries, found that 84% rank productivity as the top source of value from their AI. But only 10% let agents execute decisions without human approval across multiple functions or business areas, and just 9% report agents that can securely orchestrate workflows across applications. And while 90% say model independence matters, only 7% have an organization-wide plan for switching providers. TCS sells these services, so read it with that in mind. The same day, Outshift, Cisco's incubation arm, said in a sponsored article on VentureBeat that 75% of its debates among five-agent teams ended with every agent agreeing on the wrong outcome, without saying how many debates it ran or on what topic. Those teams spent fewer tokens, so a cost report would have logged them as efficient. For your company: keeping human approval doesn't leave you behind, and you climb to the UNATTENDED rung of the AI First ladder one task at a time, not by decree. Pick a reversible task, compare a hundred agent cases against what a person would have done, write down the error rate you'll accept beforehand, and only then remove the approval, keeping a periodic manual check. Don't use cost per agent as your measure of success; use verified results. And write one page on what you'd do if your model provider raises prices or goes down: almost nobody has one. Source and Source
Canva cuts 22% of its roles after running over budget on AI: if you sell AI at a fixed price, check your margin
Canva CEO Melanie Perkins told staff Wednesday that 1,271 roles, 22% of about 5,800, are affected through layoffs, role changes and relocations to central hubs. On Tuesday we reported that it was expanding its OpenAI deal to bring running costs down; the cuts are what's new. Her memo doesn't blame AI replacing jobs. It points to growth slowing for the first time in a decade. Back in August, Canva had already lowered its 2026 growth forecast from 30% to 20%, because serving AI features on frontier models cost well above budget. Perkins says cost per AI task has fallen nearly 90% since April, and Canva now uses its own models, while ChatGPT and Gemini turn out posters and presentations from a single prompt. Cash isn't the problem: Canva has been free-cash-flow positive for nine years and held $1.47 billion at the end of June. For your company: if you use Canva, there's no reason to run, but at renewal check the AI limits on your plan and keep your key templates saved elsewhere. The bigger lesson is different: if you sell something with AI inside at a fixed price, work out the cost per task and per customer before you promise it, and set a spending cap per project. Canva can absorb this because it has the cash; a small business feels it sooner. Source
What to watch tomorrow
Canva holds a company-wide meeting on November 10, and the Dialpad-Ada deal should close around November 12, with the roadmap still to be spelled out. Also watch whether Google answers OpenAI's figure with data of its own.