OpenAI's App Store: Customer Convenience? Or Another Attempt at Disintermediation and World Domination?

Context: On October 6th, 2025 OpenAI held their third (what I assume will be) developers conference. Of the announcements, one has the potential to impact consumers immediately: apps inside of ChatGPT. Apps available today include: Booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Expedia, Figma, Spotify, and Zillow. (Though I swear I saw DoorDash in the actual keynote. Wouldn’t be a bay area demo without food delivery.) 

My take: 

• Interesting idea and likely brilliant technology that I lack the sophistication to truly appreciate. I’ll be keen to follow its progress.

• Experience isn’t good enough yet - and I wouldn’t expect it to be at launch.

• This disintermediation concept has failed to gain traction to date. Every large consumer tech player from Meta to Google to Amazon wants to disintermediate consumers from brands (i.e., companies that produce products and services). Think about Google Shopping or Amazon’s Alexa or anything on Facebook. The experiences never offer the depth, richness, or even promised convenience that consumers seek. Remember when you could book an Uber within the United App? Yeah.

• Borrowing moments from third parties is a good strategy - it just shouldn’t be a brand’s primary one. I’ve always coached clients to own as many moments as you can (i.e., get consumers into your own app or website), manufacture as many as you can (i.e., engage them proactively), and then borrow the rest. Borrowing moments (i.e., allowing your services to exist on third party properties) can be okay.

• The concept illustrates new monetization concepts. I can ask for information, conduct product research, make a purchase, or create another deliverable with the LLM tools. Now if I ask ChatGPT for home prices in the 44483 zip code, I get a list and an offer to use Zillow. Just a matter of time before a) I can connect my apps (with log in and payment credentials) or b) preferences or c) choose a suggestion from among the paid placements.

• User design matters. Not my expertise, but I would point to my friend and former colleague Andrew Hogan’s posts.