A friend sent me a link to an OpenAI press release (see here). This past week, OpenAI held its developer conference, where it shared new products and technical capabilities. The press release announced the launch of apps in ChatGPT. Developers can now use a new apps software development kit (SDK) to allow users to access external apps from within ChatGPT. What does that mean exactly? Zillow is one of the launch partners. If you’re using ChatGPT to ask residential real estate–related questions, ChatGPT can access the Zillow app and use data from Zillow to enhance your ChatGPT session. In short, you’ll soon be able to access your favorite apps from ChatGPT.

Why This Matters

ChatGPT has 800 million active weekly users, according to Sam Altman (see here). Getting exposure to that number of potential customers is a huge opportunity for companies.

ChatGPT users can ask for third-party apps by name (e.g., “pull in Zillow data”). But ChatGPT will also recommend apps based on a user’s questions, which are a signal of intent. High intent increases the probability that someone will use and get value from a third-party app (say, Zillow) when it solves a pressing problem or answers a pressing question. Intent-based discovery is a big opportunity for other companies to find new potential customers via ChatGPT.

This all just happened this week, but if ChatGPT executes this well, it could create an app ecosystem that helps tons of third-party app companies acquire new customers when the customers most need what the companies have to offer.