The Briefing: OpenAI’s Superapp Potential

17:04 |

The Briefing

Oct 6, 2025

The Briefing

By Martin Peers

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Sam Altman's "Everything Everywhere All at Once" strategy for OpenAI was on full display on Monday. Early in the day, the ChatGPT creator revealed that it will work with Advanced Micro Devices to use that company's artificial intelligence chips, the latest example of OpenAI's wide-ranging efforts to assure itself of more computing capacity. The news sent AMD's stock rocketing 24% and surely irritated Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang a little. While AMD is a far distant rival to Nvidia, and Huang's recent deal to supply chips to OpenAI is bigger, Huang doesn't like to see his rivals get any business. (For more on all this, check out The Information's TITV today).

A few hours after that news came out, Altman took to the stage at OpenAI's DevDay conference to reveal that users of ChatGPT can now chat with apps inside the chatbot. That announcement seems like it could be a very big deal. As OpenAI staffers demonstrated on the stage, if you want details on a house you're looking at, you can search on Zillow via ChatGPT, both getting Zillow answers and asking ChatGPT questions about those answers. Half a dozen companies, including Canva, Figma, Expedia and Spotify, have already agreed to connect their apps with ChatGPT, and more will follow. The implication is that over time, ChatGPT could become the main portal for people's digital activities.

In other words, Altman may have finally cracked the "super app" holy grail—the idea of an app that combines a bunch of services like shopping, messaging, web search—that has eluded U.S. tech firms for many years. Altman rival Elon Musk, who wants to turn X into a super app, is probably kicking a spare robot around his office right now in frustration.

To be sure, lots of questions remain. Do app developers have an incentive to participate? After all, if ChatGPT becomes the primary entry point for people to use apps, the number of people going direct to apps is likely to diminish, hurting their ability to sell ads, at the very least. Zillow certainly didn't seem to worry about that: It trumpeted the news that it was available "as the only real estate app in ChatGPT." There's clearly a marketing advantage for apps: OpenAI says ChatGPT will suggest apps "when they're relevant to the conversation," such as putting forth Zillow for someone looking to buy a house.

For consumers, how valuable is the integration? Spotify, for instance, is easy to use on its own, so what's the difference if it's available through ChatGPT? Today's demonstration showed people using ChatGPT to create a Spotify playlist, which seems useful but not something people would do very often. On the other hand, ChatGPT may be an easier way to search for travel information than using travel booking sites like Expedia and Booking.com, both of which are participating. Still, despite the questions, this seems like another sign of how ChatGPT is going to change our digital behavior drastically over time.

Verizon's CEO Shake-Up

Whoa! Verizon dumped its CEO, Hans Vestberg, on Monday and announced the appointment of PayPal's former CEO Daniel Schulman to run the telecom giant, effective immediately. You'd think that would be good news for investors, seeing as how Verizon's business has stalled lately—the cellular phone giant has lost contract-based subscribers (the most valuable type) in the past two quarters. But no—Verizon stock tumbled 5% on Monday, perhaps signaling that investors think things are worse than they appear.

Schulman, who is in his late 60s, has an interesting background. He spent 18 years at AT&T in the 1980s and '90s before taking the reins of Priceline for a couple of years, and then jumping back into telecom as CEO of Virgin Mobile USA and then as a Sprint Nextel executive. But he's best known for his eight-year stint at PayPal, from 2015 to 2023, during which time the payments processing firm's revenue rose from $9.2 billion to nearly $30 billion.

Can he turn around Verizon? The jury is out.

In Other News

• The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating mobile ad technology company AppLovin's data collection practices, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

• The Ellison family's Paramount Skydance confirmed it has acquired The Free Press. The news outlet's CEO and editor in chief, Bari Weiss, will become editor in chief of CBS News, Paramount said.

Today on The Information's TITV

Check out today's episode of TITV in which we dive deep into OpenAI's deal with AMD, and separately, take you inside Founders Fund's new AI strategy.

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