OpenAI DevDay positions ChatGPT as an app platform aimed at the app store model

ChatGPT becomes an app surface

According to TechCrunch, the headline announcements at OpenAI's DevDay on Tuesday covered its agentic assistants, known as Dots, and new AI models. Taken together, though, the releases point to a larger ambition: making ChatGPT the place where software is discovered, launched and used, by people and by AI agents alike, and in the process disrupting the traditional app store model.

OpenAI says ChatGPT now has 1.2 billion weekly users, and the chatbot has yet to fully capitalise on that reach as a way to find AI-compatible software. That changes with in-conversation app suggestions: when ChatGPT recognises that a particular app could help complete a task, it will recommend it, let the user connect it and begin using it directly within the chat.

Extensions, sign-in and an allowance

OpenAI has expanded ChatGPT's plugin architecture to support extensions, which let developers build interactive panels that users can operate while chatting. TechCrunch describes this as converting apps and services that previously lived on the web or as native desktop and mobile software into something run inside ChatGPT itself.

Users have a reason to go along: "Sign in with ChatGPT" lets them carry their existing AI allowance into third-party apps. OpenAI has 16 launch partners for this, including Cognition's Devin, Notion, Vercel, T3, OpenClaw and Dactyl, and plans to add more.

In a DevDay demo, OpenAI showed its own meeting app working inside ChatGPT, surfacing upcoming calendar entries, taking AI-generated meeting notes and delivering a summary of follow-up items when the meeting ended. Another example involved design tools from Figma and Adobe, with users working on project revisions or specific features that would otherwise have required a standalone app.

Apps can also be shared with colleagues through the lightweight websites ChatGPT now produces, where co-workers sign in with their own credentials and permissions for a personalised experience.

Review process and an enterprise marketplace

On the developer side, OpenAI has improved how plugins are submitted for review, its equivalent of Apple's App Review. Developers can now track the status of a review, see what needs fixing, request a human review, and update a plugin's tools without restarting the entire submission.

There is also a new enterprise marketplace where partners can market their services. At launch it features more than 30 partners, including Adobe, Figma, Sierra, Decagon, HubSpot, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Harvey, Legora, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike and Baseten. Eligible customers can apply part of their OpenAI commitment toward approved partner software.

Dots push the shift further

The agent story deepens the platform play. Dots, OpenAI's autonomous agents, each run with their own cloud computer and browser and can use connected apps, drawing on an ecosystem OpenAI says now exceeds 4,000 apps. Instead of downloading separate apps to manage a project, such as building a website or coordinating a calendar, a user describes the outcome and the agent handles it. When the work requires another AI model or a particular application, the agent may bring that tool to the user rather than the user seeking it out.

Dots can also be proactive, stepping in to help with a project or bug, or handling a forgotten task, always with the user's approval. Their background "proactive research" runs against connected apps in read-only mode, with users retaining control over the actions taken.

What is missing

TechCrunch points out a notable gap: OpenAI did not announce a billing or revenue-sharing system comparable to the economic layer of traditional app stores, and it has not said these features would eliminate separate third-party subscriptions or other charges. Tuesday's focus was on building the discovery, distribution and interface pieces, along with the identity layer and the allowance-sharing mechanism.

Why it matters

If software discovery increasingly happens inside AI conversations, ChatGPT's weekly user base makes it a distribution channel developers cannot easily ignore, and it offers app makers a route to customers outside Apple's and Google's stores. OpenAI has assembled the technical pieces: in-chat discovery, extensions, identity, an enterprise marketplace and agents that select tools on the user's behalf. The open question is economics. Until OpenAI defines how developers get paid through this surface, it is contesting the app store's mechanics without yet offering a replacement for its business model.