OpenAI’s planned ‘superapp’ gets closer as one employee says ‘chat is dead’

OpenAI Group PBC is still focused on its plans to transform ChatGPT into some kind of “superapp,” and it will have a heavy focus on artificial intelligence agents and autonomous coding bots, according to a new report in the Financial Times this weekend.

By launching a superapp, the company hopes to be able to better compete with its rival Anthropic PBC, especially where business customers are concerned. It’s believed that the shift is part of an effort by OpenAI to become more profitable ahead of its initial public offering. That means transforming ChatGPT into more of a gateway application that might help lead free users to products they’re willing to pay money for, including OpenAI’s coding tool Codex.

Talk of OpenAI building some kind of superapp is not new, with occasional reports about the company’s ambitions first emerging late last year. But it appears that OpenAI is so determined to do it that one unnamed but senior employee reportedly told the Financial Times that “Chat is dead.”

What’s different now is that OpenAI is getting much closer to actually doing this. The report says that ChatGPT users can expect to see a massive overhaul in the coming weeks. The changes are expected to be rolled out on ChatGPT’s website and mobile application first.

According to the publication, the revamped application will place a lot more emphasis on the Codex AI assistant, in line with the company’s belief that the future of AI is not going to be focused on chatbots, but more on autonomous AI agents that can perform tasks on behalf of their users. It will encourage users to start exploring things like coding, image generation and applications from third-party providers.

Thibault Sottiaux, who heads up OpenAI’s core product and platform teams, told the Financial Times that the superapp will “transcend the actual surface… what we’re building towards is where you have your own personal agent that is capable of helping you… across everything in your life, be it personally or at work.”

“You can connect through it on your mobile, desktop or web,” he said. “When you’re in the car, you can talk to it,”

As dramatic as it sounds, what the company is really doing is making a packaging and revenue play, rather than introducing any game-changing new capabilities in terms of AI models or functions. The Wall Street Journal added some more about OpenAI’s plans back in March, saying that the plans are a “major strategy shift” for the company after abandoning side projects such as the video generator Sora.

The shift comes at a time when OpenAI is becoming increasingly desperate to get one over Anthropic, which is generally seen as having taken a lead in the enterprise AI segment. The Claude chatbot maker filed its own IPO plans on June 1, shortly after closing on a $65 billion round of funding that lifted its valuation to $965 billion. Anthropic’s revenue run rate reportedly hit $47 billion last month. OpenAI submitted its own IPO plans in May, saying that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are advising it on the listing, which is expected to occur before the end of the summer.

The two companies are part of a crowded trillion-dollar IPO wave that also includes Elon Musk’s SpaceX Corp., which submitted its own paperwork relating to a stock market debut last week, possibly floating as early as this coming week. If OpenAI can sell investors on a “platform” story, it may be able to justify its planned trillion-dollar-plus market capitalization in a market that’s increasingly wary of AI startups burning through cash.

Image: OpenAI