OpenAI turns ChatGPT into an app store rival at Dev Day

OpenAI used its Dev Day event on Tuesday to lay out a broader plan: turning ChatGPT itself into the place where software is discovered, launched, and used by people and AI agents alike. The announcements, spanning a new autonomous agent product called Dots to an expanded marketplace, point at unwinding the app store model that Apple and Google have long controlled.

ChatGPT, which OpenAI says now has 1.2 billion weekly users, will start suggesting apps mid-conversation when it recognizes a task an app could help with, letting users connect and use that app directly inside the chatbot. The move builds on an expanded plugin architecture that now supports “extensions” — interactive panels developers can build so users work with their tools without leaving the chat. Developers can build AI-native versions of their apps through ChatGPT, similar to how they would build for the open web or a mobile app store.

A new “Sign in with ChatGPT” feature lets users carry their ChatGPT identity into third-party apps and use their existing AI allowance there. OpenAI has 16 launch partners for the feature, including Cognition’s Devin, Notion, Vercel, T3, OpenClaw, and Dactyl, and says it plans to add more soon. In a Dev Day demo, OpenAI showed a meeting app working inside ChatGPT, surfacing a user’s calendar, taking AI notes, and summarizing follow-ups; other demos showed design tools from Figma and Adobe used directly in the chat interface. Apps built this way can also be shared with colleagues through lightweight ChatGPT-generated websites, where each person signs in with their own credentials.

OpenAI also streamlined how developers submit plugins for review — its answer to Apple’s App Review process — letting them track review status, see what needs fixing, request a human review, and update tools without restarting the submission. Separately, the company launched an enterprise app marketplace with some 30-plus partners at launch, including Adobe, Figma, Sierra, Decagon, HubSpot, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Harvey, Legora, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, and Baseten; eligible customers can apply part of their existing OpenAI commitment toward that partner software.

The other half of the plan is Dots, OpenAI’s new autonomous AI agents, each running on its own cloud computer and browser and able to tap an ecosystem of more than 4,000 connected apps to complete tasks without the user managing separate apps directly. Dots can also act proactively, running background “proactive research” through connected apps in read-only mode, though taking action still requires the user’s approval. OpenAI has not said whether any of this would replace separate third-party subscriptions, and it did not announce a billing or revenue-sharing system comparable to the economic layer of traditional app stores.

Why it matters

The push gives app makers a distribution channel outside Apple and Google’s app stores, but OpenAI still hasn’t detailed how billing or revenue-sharing would work in this new layer.