OpenAI never wanted to build a chatbot.
As an early beta tester for OpenAI’s GPT-3 model, I can vouch for the fact that the company was caught totally off guard by ChatGPT’s runaway success.
An email that OpenAI sent me on November 28, 2022—just two days before ChatGPT came to market and kicked off a trillion-dollar, multiyear, economy-distending AI scramble—didn’t even mention the new interface.
Rather, it bragged about the company’s then-revolutionary “DaVinci” model and how it could “deliver clearer, more engaging, and more compelling content” and allow developers to “take on tasks that would have previously been too difficult to achieve.”
From the breathless tone of the email, it was clear that OpenAI had bigger ambitions than creating a text-based tool to help you argue with your insurance company or write KPop Demon Hunters fanfics.
As Nick Turley, OpenAI’s head of product, admitted this week, the company “got a little sidetracked” by ChatGPT.
Now OpenAI’s true ambitions are becoming increasingly clear. In Turley’s words, OpenAI “never meant to build a chatbot.” Instead, the company always planned “to build a super assistant.” And that’s exactly what it’s now doing.
The ‘super app’
In America, our app landscape is highly fragmented. Yes, if you want to know how fast bamboo grows or figure out the chords for R.E.M.’s 1985 classic “Wendell Gee,” you might fire up the ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini app and ask the bots.
If you want to post to social media, though, you’re likely to reach for Instagram, TikTok, or—perhaps steeling yourself for the possibility of encountering MechaHitler—X.
Need to bank? Open up the crappy app for your local bank branch with the UI from 2012, and hope for the best. Buying something? There’s Amazon, Instacart, and DoorDash for that. Want to secretly determine how much wealth your friends have accumulated? Zillow to the rescue!
In other parts of the world, apps aren’t like that at all. Many countries, especially in Asia, have super apps that integrate all those functions and more into one tool, often controlled by a single, über-influential company.
In China, WeChat provides messaging and gaming, but also mobile payments, social media, and mini apps for things like ride-hailing, paying bills, and even getting city services.
In many Southwest Asian countries, Grab provides financial services, rides, food delivery, and much else. In the Middle East, Careem provides similar functions. Africa, Latin America, and many other geographies have similar super apps.
America doesn’t. And to American technology companies, that’s a big problem.
Because the apps are so all-encompassing, their creators control incredible amounts of capital and power. Tencent, the company behind WeChat, had revenues of more than $90 billion and profits approaching $30 billion in 2024—much of it driven by WeChat—and is growing fast.
That’s an especially colossal sum in China, making Tencent one of the country’s most profitable companies, behind only a handful of largely state-controlled banks and conglomerates.
Here in America, Elon Musk had ambitions to turn X into a super app, but his politics and penchant for second grade humor got in the way.
No one else has really taken up the gauntlet. Until now.
OpenAI Eats Everything
At its October 2025 “Developer Day,” OpenAI made clear that it intends to create a super app, and will spend an almost limitless amount of money to make that happen.
During the event, the company announced the ability to run apps directly within the ChatGPT interface. These are very similar to the “mini apps” that have made WeChat so powerful. Initial partners include Spotify and Zillow, but the list will inevitably grow.
Simultaneously, the company has rolled out multiple functions that make it look less like a chatbot maker and more like a super-app company.
Last week, OpenAI launched new features that let the bot spend your money for you, as well as a protocol to allow direct purchasing from any merchant who opts in.
OpenAI’s Sora social network—where all the content is joyfully fake—takes on TikTok and has immediately leapt to the No. 1 spot in Apple’s App Store. And earlier this year, OpenAI shared that it plans to launch a browser to rival the ubiquitous Google Chrome.
OpenAI seems to suddenly be everywhere, doing everything. That broad-ranging ambition is the hallmark of a super-app maker. And again, if all the signals weren’t clear enough, Turley essentially confirmed the company’s new direction with his “super assistant” comments.
So, will it work?
If any company can create a super app, it’s OpenAI. With its wild consumer success, the company has access to bottomless pits of capital. ChatGPT has 800 million weekly active users, and that number continues to grow.
OpenAI is the first company in a generation to create an entirely new way of interacting with computers. Its intelligent chat interface lends itself to the integration of other apps and services. My own experience using Instant Checkout confirms that buying things within the ChatGPT interface really is seamless.
Still, America’s existing tech titans won’t go quietly. Google is reportedly expanding its own Gemini app, and its Nano Banana system proves it can still grab the public’s attention. Meta already has its own Sora doppelgänger.
And while OpenAI is growing quickly, its revenue is only around $10 billion—a drop in the bucket compared to Google’s $350 billion, and still a fraction of the revenue of its Chinese super-app rivals.
OpenAI would love to take over every aspect of your digital life. And it may. But despite the hype, the company still has a very long way to go.
