By Adam Levine

With any big shift in technology, there's opportunity for new platforms -- and significant motivation to create them. These are systems like Apple's iOS and Alphabet's Android which third-party applications live on. They act as a mediator between customers and software developers. Platform owners get income, and a lot of power to shape the ecosystem to their needs.

In the wake of ChatGPT's success, OpenAI is now making its bid for platform status.

At its software-focused DevDay conference this week, OpenAI announced the ChatGPT software development kit, or SDK, similar to what Apple and Google provide to developers so that they can put their apps on smartphones. With OpenAI's SDK, apps can be used inside of the ChatGPT window using plain English language instructions.

One of the launch partners that was demoed during the DevDay keynote was Canva, the graphic design application. Other launch partners included Expedia, Spotify and Zillow, with Target, Uber, and others on deck.

Through the ChatGPT interface, a demonstrator asked Canva to make a poster and a slide deck with limited instructions, and it returned with the requested documents after some lengthy computing. OpenAI is effectively asking users: Do you want Canva in your AI chatbot, or do you want an AI chatbot in your Canva -- or neither?

Becoming a true platform is no easy feat. There are more failed attempts than successful ones. Mobile operating systems saw two winners from Apple and Google, but also plenty of losers, including Microsoft, which had every advantage going into that competition. In the end, Windows went from being the biggest platform in the world to third place. Something similar could happen to iOS and Android in the AI inflection.

When done right, platform status can also bring hardware supremacy. And OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has his sights set on a "family of devices" that he hopes could one day supplant the smartphone, as phones displaced PCs. In partnership with ex-Apple designers, including Jony Ive, Altman has said he's building a new sort of device for the AI age that will "completely reimagine what it means to use a computer."

It's unknown what the device will look like and how it will function -- it won't be a wearable device like a watch or a pin. Altman, Ive, and their team have indicated the device will have a voice interface, as with many AI-first designs, and no screen.

If so, that would limit the use cases versus smartphones or PCs. In the Canva example from OpenAI's own presentation, if the user can't see the poster and slide deck, there isn't much that can be done. Moreover, the device will rely on "magic intelligence in the cloud" to do anything, according to Altman, and so it won't work without a network.

To be sure, there was also skepticism regarding the use of apps on the small screens of smartphones, and we all know how that turned out. Someday, something will replace the smartphone as people's primary platform and device. Sam Altman and Jony Ive think that day may be coming sooner than later.

Write to Adam Levine at adam.levine@barrons.com

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October 10, 2025 12:19 ET (16:19 GMT)

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