OpenAI held its annual dev day on Monday, where the company rolled out its plan to build apps into ChatGPT. The demo was impressive, showing how programs like Spotify and Figma can be called or discovered without leaving the ChatGPT window. With so much of the tech world barreling toward AI integration, OpenAI’s demo was the best picture yet of what an AI-first internet might actually look like, with interfaces like ChatGPT querying information and executing commands directly.
If you’re watching closely, you may have noticed that there’s a lot of room in this system for money to change hands. Just last week, the company launched Instant Checkout, an agentic shopping system that serves as payment infrastructure for one-off purchases, plugging in any stores that sell through Shopify, Etsy, or Stripe. Now, apps provide the front-end infrastructure, letting service providers build their own interface into ChatGPT.
In short, OpenAI now has all the pieces in place for AI-driven commerce, establishing ChatGPT as a place customers go to buy and retailers go to sell. It’s a huge new line of business for the company — and one with huge implications for the tech industry. In this world, OpenAI isn’t just competing with Google and Anthropic, but with Amazon and Wal-Mart.
