The Financial Times, citing “more than a dozen current and former employees,” reports that OpenAI is radically rethinking its core product, ChatGPT. Apparently in a matter of weeks, it’s going to transform into a “superapp.” A senior OpenAI staffer told FT, “Chat is dead.” Instead, ChatGPT is reportedly becoming a gateway for agents and coding tools, which generate more revenue. Codex, OpenAI’s coding tool, has tiered monthly subscriptions, but enterprise-oriented pay schemes, where employers provide access to the product, and pay on a per-token basis, are a clearer path to the significant bump in revenue OpenAI desperately needs as it races its chief competitor, Anthropic, to the IPO finish line. Anthropic is currently in the lead, having leapfrogged OpenAI over the past year by marketing itself to enterprise clients, rather than the general population.
An April blog post from OpenAI Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser first spelled this out. OpenAI was planning a “unified AI superapp as the primary experience where employees get things done.” The superapp experience, Dresser wrote, is supposed to “bring together the best of ChatGPT, Codex, agentic browsing, and broader capabilities.” FT’s reporting now suggests that Dresser was not talking about a product intended as a compliment to ChatGPT; she was talking about ChatGPT itself.
