OpenAI just made its biggest platform play yet. At Developer Day in San Francisco, CEO Sam Altman unveiled native apps that run entirely within ChatGPT - transforming the chatbot into what looks like a chat-driven operating system. The move signals OpenAI's ambitious bid to keep users locked inside its ecosystem rather than bouncing between traditional apps.
OpenAI just dropped the blueprint for what could be computing's next paradigm shift. At the company's Developer Day in San Francisco, CEO Sam Altman unveiled a new Apps SDK that lets third-party services run natively inside ChatGPT - no more tab-switching, no more app-hopping, just pure conversational computing.
The demo was telling. OpenAI engineer Alexi Christakis started a chat with Canva's app embedded right in the ChatGPT window, asking it to whip up posters for a fictional dog-walking business. Then he pivoted seamlessly to creating a pitch deck for raising capital. When ChatGPT suggested Pittsburgh as an ideal expansion city, Christakis immediately called up Zillow's app within the same chat thread to browse three-bedroom houses with yards.
"We never meant to build a chatbot; we meant to build a super assistant, and we got a little sidetracked," Nick Turley, OpenAI's head of product for ChatGPT, told reporters after the keynote. That admission reveals how OpenAI views this pivot - not as a feature add-on, but as a return to its original vision of AI as the ultimate productivity layer.
The timing couldn't be more strategic. While Apple and Google fight over mobile OS dominance, OpenAI is essentially bypassing both by creating what Altman calls "a new generation of apps that are adaptive, interactive, and personalized." The $500 billion startup is betting that conversational interfaces will eventually replace the point-and-click paradigm that's dominated computing for decades.
Initially, only select enterprise partners like Spotify, Canva, and Zillow can distribute these native apps. But OpenAI is already planning monetization beyond just API fees. "Soon we'll offer an agentic commerce protocol, with instant checkout from right within ChatGPT," Altman announced, signaling plans to capture transaction fees from purchases made through the platform.
This isn't OpenAI's first stab at building an app ecosystem. The company launched custom GPTs two years ago, eventually amassing over 3 million creations when the GPT Store went live in January 2024. But those widgets largely flopped because they felt like glorified chatbots rather than full-featured applications. The new SDK represents a fundamental architectural shift - these are real apps with interactive interfaces, not just conversational wrappers.
