OpenAI Reworks Product Strategy Around New Desktop Super App

OpenAI is preparing a new push to make ChatGPT more central to how people work on their computers. It plans to combine its ChatGPT app, Codex coding platform and browser into a desktop “super app.” According to The Wall Street Journal, the move is meant to simplify the user experience while helping the company sharpen its focus on engineering and business customers at a moment when competition in enterprise AI is intensifying.

The Journal reported that OpenAI’s applications chief, Fidji Simo, will oversee the shift, while President Greg Brockman will help manage the product overhaul and related organizational changes. The strategy marks a clear turn away from last year’s more fragmented product rollout, when OpenAI introduced a range of stand-alone offerings that, by the company’s own view, diluted focus. The new plan is to build more agentic capabilities into one core desktop experience so the software can handle a wider range of tasks, from writing code to analyzing data. The mobile ChatGPT app is expected to remain unchanged.

The broader implication is that OpenAI appears to be moving from a product-sprawl phase into a platform phase. The Journal frames the shift as both a usability play and a competitive response, especially as Anthropic gains traction with enterprise and coding customers.

In an internal note cited by the paper, Simo wrote: “We realized we were spreading our efforts across too many apps and stacks.” She added that the fragmentation had been slowing the company down and making it harder to meet its quality bar. That is a revealing signal for the payments, commerce and digital economy sectors: the next phase of AI may be less about adding more apps and more about building one trusted operating layer for work, shopping, search and software tasks.

Recent PYMNTS coverage has already been pointing in that direction. Over the past two weeks, PYMNTS has reported that OpenAI is shelving side projects to focus on core business lines, shifting commerce efforts toward brand-owned ChatGPT apps, pursuing enterprise agent platforms, expanding its coding push through acquisitions, and positioning itself for a possible IPO tied to enterprise applications.

Taken together, that coverage suggests the “super app” is not an isolated product tweak. It is part of a broader effort to narrow priorities, unify execution and turn OpenAI into a more disciplined commercial platform.