OpenAI to merge ChatGPT, Codex and the Atlas browser into a single desktop super app

OpenAI is preparing a desktop "super app" that will merge the ChatGPT chatbot, the Codex AI coding tool and the AI-powered Atlas browser into a single application, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing an internal company memo.

What the super app will combine

The new product will bring three previously separate OpenAI apps into one window: the ChatGPT assistant, the Codex coding tool and the Atlas web browser, which is built on top of an AI model. According to The Wall Street Journal, the decision is recorded in an internal memo by Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of Applications. The memo explains the merger as an effort to simplify the company's product lineup and remove duplicate interfaces.

• The super app will combine ChatGPT, Codex and the Atlas browser in one application
• The Wall Street Journal reported the plans, citing an internal company memo
• The memo's author is Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of Applications
• Last year OpenAI released the Sora video app and bought an AI hardware startup founded by Jony Ive
• The company points to growing competition from Anthropic

Simo explicitly called product fragmentation an internal problem that hurts the quality of the final product.

"Fragmentation is slowing us down and making it harder to hit the quality bar we want," —

Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of Applications, in the memo quoted by The Wall Street Journal.

Why OpenAI is changing course now

Throughout last year, OpenAI bet on high-profile standalone launches rather than a single product. It released Sora, a video app that lets users generate and share AI clips as a separate social network, and bought an AI hardware company founded by Jony Ive, Apple's former chief designer. The deal was meant to give OpenAI its own line of AI devices. As The Verge notes, it was during this same period that OpenAI ran into growing competition from Anthropic, a rival whose products are increasingly mentioned as an alternative to OpenAI's tools among both developers and enterprise customers.

Merging ChatGPT, Codex and Atlas into one super app looks like an attempt to stop resources from spreading thin across parallel teams and apps. Instead of competing with itself for the attention of developers and everyday users through three different interfaces (a chat, a coding environment and a browser), OpenAI, judging by Simo's memo, is betting on a single product with a higher quality bar and a simpler story for users.

What this means

If OpenAI carries the merger through to release, users will no longer have to switch between separate apps for chat, coding and AI-assisted browsing. All three functions will live in one desktop interface. For the company, this is first of all a way to focus development on one product instead of three parallel tracks, cut internal duplication between teams and respond faster to competition from Anthropic, rather than spreading engineering resources across ChatGPT, Codex and Atlas individually. The memo Simo wrote, as quoted by The Wall Street Journal, does not yet disclose an exact release date for the super app or any details on how the interface of each of the three products will change.