OpenAI rebuilds ChatGPT into a superapp as IPO looms

OpenAI is preparing the biggest redesign of ChatGPT since its launch in 2022. The plan is to create a unified platform and bundle coding tools, AI agents, and third party integrations into the chatbot. The company needs to justify an $852 billion valuation before it goes public.

The overhaul is due to OpenAI believing that conversational AI alone won’t bring in the revenue the company needs. One senior employee told the Financial Times that “chat is dead.” This comment shows internal change toward products that actually do things instead of just answering questions.

ChatGPT is transforming into a superapp

The revamped ChatGPT will push users toward paid tools like Codex, and toward AI agents that can handle multi step workflows. The changes start appearing on ChatGPT’s website and mobile apps in the coming weeks.

Thibault Sottiaux, who now leads all of OpenAI’s core product and platform work, said the company is “building towards” a product “where you have your own personal agent that is capable of helping you across everything in your life, be it personally or at work.”

Codex has grown its weekly active user base sixfold to more than 5 million since OpenAI shipped a desktop application in February. Most Codex users pay for it. That’s a sharp contrast with ChatGPT’s weekly user base of nearly 1 billion, most of whom use it for free.

Business customers already account for ~40% of OpenAI’s revenue. The company expects that share to hit 50% by year-end. Two million businesses currently use OpenAI’s products.

OpenAI has been layering features onto Codex at a rapid pace. In May, the company launched Codex integration in the ChatGPT mobile app, letting developers monitor and manage coding tasks from their phones. The phone functions as a remote interface to a Codex environment running on a separate machine. Files and credentials stay off the device itself.

OpenAI and Anthropic continue to compete

The superapp strategy puts OpenAI on a collision course with Anthropic, whose enterprise focus has produced rapid growth. ChatGPT’s overhaul is explicitly meant to help OpenAI compete with Anthropic for business customers.

Anthropic’s Claude Code has emerged as one of its fastest-growing products. OpenAI’s Codex mobile launch in May was widely seen as a direct response, since Anthropic had already offered mobile access to Claude Code sessions through a feature called Remote Control since February.

Reports of a ChatGPT superapp have circulated for months. The Wall Street Journal reported on similar plans in March. Back then, OpenAI executives said they were abandoning “side quests” like the Sora video generator to consolidate around a single product.

OpenAI confirmed in March that it was building a single desktop application combining ChatGPT, Codex, and its Atlas web browser. The mobile and web redesign is the next phase of that consolidation.

On June 9, OpenAI filed confidential IPO paperwork but said it has not decided on timing, according to a recent post by Cryptopolitan. The ChatGPT maker may stay private for a while longer since some things are easier to do without public market scrutiny.

On June 9, OpenAI submitted a confidential S-1 filing, but without a listing timeline, according to a recent post by Cryptopolitan.

The ChatGPT maker said, “We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.”

Just days earlier, Anthropic filed confidentially for an IPO on June 1, 2026. The Claude maker, currently valued at $965 billion, has similarly stopped short of committing to a listing date.