OpenAI Plans to Merge ChatGPT, Codex and Atlas Into One 'Superapp': WSJ

OpenAI is done pretending it tin juggle galore things astatine once.

The institution is merging ChatGPT, its Codex coding tool, and the Atlas web browser into a azygous desktop app—one that executives are calling a “superapp.” Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s main of applications and the erstwhile CEO of Instacart, reportedly laid it retired bluntly successful an interior memo Thursday.

“We realized we were spreading our efforts crossed excessively galore apps and stacks, and that we request to simplify our efforts,” she wrote, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Simo aboriginal added that fragmentation had been “slowing america down and making it harder to deed the prime barroom we want.” Greg Brockman, the company’s president, is stepping successful to assistance co-lead the overhaul.

Rival steadfast Anthropic has been steadily winning implicit endeavor and engineering customers, mostly connected the backmost of Claude Code and its Cowork product, which person gained traction with businesses. To this, adhd a monolithic migration from ChatGPT to Claude and the emergence of the #QuitGPT movement aft OpenAI struck a woody with the Pentagon that Anthropic rejected, and it is casual to recognize wherefore the institution is successful an uncomfortable presumption close now.

Internally, Simo has described Anthropic’s emergence arsenic a “wake-up call,” the study notes, and told employees they couldn’t spend “side quests”—a not-so-subtle notation to projects that consumed resources without delivering sustained impact.

The superapp’s halfway stake is agentic AI—systems that don’t conscionable reply questions but autonomously transportation retired tasks connected your computer: penning code, analyzing data, and navigating the web. The thought is that if ChatGPT is wherever you start, Codex and Atlas should beryllium wherever you work, each without switching windows.

It’s besides a displacement toward a exemplary that’s already moving elsewhere. Anthropic’s desktop acquisition bundles its chatbot, Claude Code, and endeavor workflows into a unified environment. In AI, being 2nd to a signifier that works whitethorn substance much than being archetypal to 1 that doesn’t.

The mobile ChatGPT app volition stay unchanged for now. This is simply a desktop-first propulsion aimed astatine developers, powerfulness users, and endeavor customers—the conception that really drives revenue.

What’s telling is what’s being deprioritized arsenic portion of this shift.

Atlas, which launched successful October arsenic a Chromium-based browser with an embedded AI cause called Operator, ne'er gained meaningful traction arsenic a standalone product, particularly aft the monolithic traction that Perplexity Comet got.

Sora, the video generator that concisely deed No. 1 connected the App Store aft its September debut, has since flattened successful usage. Internally, teams person besides been reshuffled, with compute resources and merchandise ownership dispersed bladed crossed excessively galore initiatives.

Now, the operation is being simplified astir a azygous halfway product. The program is to grow Codex beyond coding into broader productivity tasks, earlier folding ChatGPT and Atlas afloat into the aforesaid environment.

Simo framed it arsenic “an accidental to harvester the strongest AI user app and marque with the strongest agentic app and truly leverage our user standard to springiness agentic capabilities to everyone.”

No motorboat timeline has been announced. Decrypt reached retired to OpenAI to corroborate the reporting and question comment, but did not instantly person a response.