OpenAI’s new app platform Chief takes charge to evolve ChatGPT into a full operating system

OpenAI’s appointment of Glen Coates signals a major shift toward building a ChatGPT-powered operating system, blending AI, apps, and future hardware into a unified, intelligent computing experience.

OpenAI has taken a significant step towards evolving ChatGPT into a full operating system (OS), with the appointment of Glen Coates as the new Head of App Platform. The move comes as the company is in the process of redefining user interaction with AI through the possible blurring of standalone apps with an integrated AI-focused computing environment.

The newly appointed Head of App Platform at OpenAI, Coates, who had been serving as a Shopify executive leading products for many years, took to social media to announce his new role and his excitement in joining OpenAI’s mission in re-architecting an AI-centered OS. In a LinkedIn post, Coates shared his long-held passion for reimagining an OS from the ground up with generative AI at its core, stating that he had held this vision for as long as he could recall building and playing around with systems such as Linux and iOS.

ChatGPT currently operates primarily as a chat interface, but with its strong productivity tool orientation and its features such as integrated search, support for third-party apps, intelligent agents, and context, the foundation for ChatGPT acting as an interface or mediator between the user and other software is already in place. If this system is further expanded and linked even more deeply to core device functions, ChatGPT could be transformed into something that is functionally similar to an operating system, which could be even more the case on a future AI-powered device on which the chatbot may be baked-in at the hardware level.

OpenAI has already been taking steps in this direction. The launch of ChatGPT Apps, a new framework that allows developers to bring their services into the chatbot platform and let users perform a wide range of tasks without leaving the AI interface, was a key building block in the architectural shift. While this, in combination with some of the other tools ChatGPT now offers such as built-in search and agent-based task automation, may not yet be a full-blown OS, it is close enough in experience to an OS environment to be considered one, especially if the apps were to be part of an underlying ecosystem architecture.

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The timing of Coates’ hiring is also particularly interesting, given the company’s ongoing hardware ambitions, which the company has been active on in recent months. OpenAI is said to be building AI-powered devices in partnership with famed designer Jony Ive, which is expected to hit the market around 2027. These hardware efforts further point to the idea that a ChatGPT-based OS would be used not only on third-party devices but on devices purpose-built to make the most out of AI at every level of interaction.

In an interview with Protocol, Coates has also made it clear that this won’t happen overnight. An immediate takeover of the current landscape of traditional operating systems is not the plan, but rather a rethinking of what an OS can and should be in an AI-first future. Conversational context, intelligent agents, and greater app integration into a shared ecosystem may form the cornerstone of this new wave of everyday computing.

OpenAI has not disclosed a specific roadmap or timeline for ChatGPT as an OS, but the combination of the executive appointment, the recent developments in its chatbot platform, and the company’s reported hardware projects suggest a clear vision of what the AI industry leader is working towards. If successful, this would represent one of the most important transformations in personal computing since the rise of mobile-centric ecosystems, placing AI at the center of the user experience.