OpenAI is planning to launch a "super app" combining its ChatGPT app, browser Atlas, and coding platform Codex, according to the Wall Street Journal. The strategic shift comes as the company faces competition from rival Anthropic in capturing the enterprise and engineering market.
The superapp seeks to simplify the user experience and marks a significant change from last year, when OpenAI rolled out a large series of separate products. This led to what some in the company perceived as an unwieldy balancing act between too many apps. The AI firm is aiming to consolidate its products in order to streamline its resources and refocus the firm's direction.
Fidji Simo, OpenAI's chief of applications, will lead the shift and the sales team's marketing of the superapp, while president Greg Brockman will help her manage the product's revamp and needed organizational changes, an OpenAI spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal.
"When new bets start to work, like we're seeing now with Codex, it's very important to double down on them and avoid distractions," said Simo in a post on X. "Really glad we're seizing this moment."
Through this new super app, OpenAI seeks to tap into the emerging market for agentic AI, which allows agents on a user's computer to work autonomously on a variety of background tasks, such as coding, analyzing data, and responding to emails. AI firms are angling to gain headway in the race to create AI agents that will attract businesses seeking these tools to boost their employees' productivity.
OpenAI faces stiff competition in this market from Anthropic, which has seen success in its own agentic AI products such as Claude Code and Cowork. CNN reported that the cutting-edge features in the latter garnered such attention that it triggered a sell-off of software stocks soon after its release this year.
Both Anthropic and OpenAI are chasing ambitious revenue targets for investors ahead of public listings as early as the end of 2026. For OpenAI, this may in fact be a deadline for unlocking US$35 billion of investment from Amazon, agreed upon last month, which The Information reported could be contingent on the company either reaching AGI or achieving an IPO by the end of the year.
According to the Wall Street Journal, top executives at OpenAI have spent the last few weeks looking through OpenAI's product lineup and deciding which areas to focus on or deprioritize. Simo reportedly told employees in an all-hands meeting last week that the company could not afford to be taken off-track by "side quests" and that the company was acting as though it were under "code red" given to Anthropic's success.
A company spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that its Codex app will be enhanced with new agentic features over the coming months before it is merged with ChatGPT and Atlas into the new super app, while the ChatGPT mobile app will remain unchanged.
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Article edited by Jack Wu
