ChatGPT is about to undergo its biggest "overhaul" ever

From chatbot to AI super application

According to sources from the Financial Times, OpenAI is preparing to carry out the biggest reform to ChatGPT since this chatbot launched in 2022.

The company is said to want to turn ChatGPT from a conversational assistant into a comprehensive AI platform, allowing users to program, create content, handle work and use third-party applications right in the same interface.

The first changes are expected to appear in the coming weeks on both ChatGPT's website and mobile application.

This upgrade is part of OpenAI's large-scale product restructuring to find new revenue sources and increase competition with Anthropic, the company behind Claude.

Codex, AI agents and "no prompt needed" ambition

The focus of this upgrade is Codex, the AI ​​programming platform that OpenAI considers one of the most important growth drivers.

Financial Times said OpenAI has brought many product teams under a unified leadership group led by Mr. Thibault Sottiaux, who was formerly in charge of Codex.

The company is also redesigning the ChatGPT interface to encourage users to use more programming tools, AI imaging products and partner applications such as Canva or Booking.com.

Codex is currently one of OpenAI's fastest growing products. The tool's weekly active users have increased sixfold since the desktop version was released in February this year, surpassing the 5 million user mark.

In parallel, OpenAI is betting big on AI agents capable of doing work for users instead of just answering questions.

These systems are expected to be able to manage schedules, book services, perform office tasks or handle multi-step processes.

OpenAI's long-term goal is to build a personal AI assistant that can accompany users in all activities, from work to life, on many different devices.

The company is even said to be looking towards a future where users no longer have to enter prompts or select features. Instead, AI models will automatically understand the user's intent and proactively perform actions requested by the user.

Important move before IPO

The above move comes in the context of OpenAI increasingly focusing on business customers, a group that is considered to bring higher profit margins than individual users.

Currently, about 2 million businesses are using OpenAI products and this customer group contributes about 40% of the company's revenue. OpenAI expects this rate to increase to 50% by the end of 2026.

Meanwhile, ChatGPT has surpassed 900 million weekly active users and owns more than 50 million paid subscribers.

Recent reports indicate that OpenAI currently generates about $2 billion in revenue per month but is still not profitable due to the costs of operating AI systems at scale.

Therefore, to focus resources on the enterprise segment, OpenAI has narrowed down a number of projects aimed at general users. ChatGPT's built-in payment feature has been canceled, and the Sora video creation tool is no longer maintained after less than a year of launch.

At the same time, OpenAI is looking to transition user files to products with higher commercial value such as Codex, AI agents and enterprise software.

The expansion of corporate services is expected to help improve the financial situation before investors evaluate the company's business performance during the IPO (initial public offering) process.

OpenAI's ambitions are backed by a $122 billion funding round completed in March, bringing OpenAI's valuation to about $852 billion. In particular, Amazon committed to invest 50 billion USD, while Nvidia and SoftBank each invested 30 billion USD.

Financial Times said OpenAI is preparing for the possibility of filing a confidential IPO in the near future. Two banks, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, are said to be advising the company on the listing deal, which could bring the company's value beyond the $1,000 billion mark by the end of 2026.

The race continues to heat up as Anthropic filed a confidential IPO with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on June 1.

This company is currently valued at about 965 billion USD after the latest funding round, creating more competitive pressure on OpenAI in the global AI race.

If the plan is successful, ChatGPT will likely become the center of an AI ecosystem, with multiple applications and services operated through a single interface.