OpenAI’s latest features take direct aim at the app store model

At its Dev Day event, OpenAI unveiled features that position ChatGPT as an app discovery and distribution surface, enabling users and autonomous agents to launch and interact with third-party software directly inside the chatbot. Announcements included expanded plugin support (now with extensions and interactive panels), a “Sign in with ChatGPT” flow that carries a user’s AI allowance to partner apps, and autonomous agents called Dots that can operate using connected apps.

By AI Newsroom· Reviewed by Pranav, Founder & Editor-in-ChiefPublished less than a minute agoUpdated less than a minute ago0 views

OpenAI’s latest features take direct aim at the app store model

Why It Matters

These changes could shift how software is discovered and consumed by routing usage and distribution through ChatGPT rather than traditional app stores, potentially creating a new channel for developers and a new control point for user-agent interactions. The moves also tie users’ identities and AI allowances to third-party apps, which may affect how subscriptions and access are managed across ecosystems.

Key Facts

Event: OpenAI Dev Day
ChatGPT weekly users (reported): 1.2 billion
Launch partners for 'Sign in with ChatGPT': 16 (including Cognition’s Devin, Notion, Vercel, T3, OpenClaw, and Dactyl)
Apps Dots can connect to: Over 4,000
Partners in OpenAI enterprise marketplace at launch: About 30+ (including Adobe, Figma, HubSpot, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike)

At Dev Day, OpenAI outlined a push to make ChatGPT a place where software is discovered, launched and used by both people and autonomous agents. The company announced several product changes designed to embed apps into the chat experience: ChatGPT will suggest apps during conversations when they could help complete a task, and users can connect and operate those apps inside the chatbot interface.

OpenAI expanded its plugin architecture to support extensions and interactive panels, allowing developers to create in-chat interfaces that let users work with tools without leaving ChatGPT. The company also introduced “Sign in with ChatGPT,” which lets users carry their ChatGPT identity and AI allowance into third-party apps; OpenAI said 16 launch partners are participating in that effort.

The company showed demos where apps such as a meetings tool, design apps from Figma and Adobe, and other services run within ChatGPT and can be shared via lightweight ChatGPT-generated websites. Developers gain improved review workflows for plugins — including tracking reviews, requesting human review, and updating tools without restarting submissions — and an enterprise marketplace where eligible customers can apply part of their OpenAI commitments toward approved partner software.

A central element of the strategy is OpenAI’s autonomous agents, called Dots: cloud-based agents with their own browsing and compute capabilities that can use connected apps to perform tasks on behalf of users. Dots can proactively offer help, do background “proactive research” in read-only modes, and draw on the ecosystem of more than 4,000 apps OpenAI says it supports. OpenAI framed these capabilities as an alternative path for distribution and discovery that could operate alongside — and in some cases bypass — traditional app stores, though the company did not announce changes to third-party subscription or billing rules.