Tech Brew Ride Home - OpenAI Wants To Be The Windows Of AI

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

Forget building apps on TOP of ChatGPT, now they’ve put the apps INSIDE of ChatGPT. Why this is a play for ChatGPT to become the Windows of the AI era. The prediction market market continues to explode. Turning down the volume on streaming ads. And why Mr. Beast is worried about AI social media. OpenAI announces Apps SDK allowing ChatGPT to launch and run third party apps like Zillow, Canva, Spotify (VentureBeat) OpenAI’s Windows Play (Stratechery) NYSE Owner to Invest Up to $2 Billion in Polymarket (WSJ) California law forces Netflix, Hulu to turn down ad volumes (Politico) MrBeast says AI could threaten creators’ livelihoods, calling it ‘scary times’ for the industry (TechCrunch) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Google Fi Wireless is not subject to data traffic deprioritization during times of high network usage. Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Tuesday, October 7th, 2025. I'm Brian McCullough today. Forget building apps on top of ChatGPT. Now they've put the apps inside of ChatGPT. Why this is a play for ChatGPT to become the Windows of the AI era. The prediction market continues to explode, turning down the volume on streaming ads, and why Mr. Beast is worried about AI social media. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. When your business evolves, so does your risk of data loss. But with VIM, your data is always on the map. Partner with VIM for coverage that keeps you moving and get protection for workloads of all shapes and sizes, even the ones you haven't created yet, so you can stay resilient as you scale. With VIM, it's all good. Get workload coverage that works for your business at VIM.com. That's VEEAM.com. OpenAI held their developers day, and the big news was that they announced apps that work inside of chat GPT, piloting this new initiative with apps from the likes of booking.com, Canva, Coursera, Figma, Expedia, Spotify, and Zillow, available for logged-in users.

Quoting Venture Beat. In other words, instead of launching apps one-by-one on your phone, computer, or on the web, now you can do all that without ever leaving chat GPT. This feature allows the user to log in to their accounts on those external apps and bring all their information back into chat GPT and use the apps very similarly to how they already do outside of the chat bot, but now with the ability to ask chat GPT to perform certain actions, analyze content, or go beyond what each app could offer on its own. You can direct Canva to make you slides based on a text description. Ask Zillow for home listings in a certain area fitting certain requirements or ask Coursera about a specific lessons content while it plays on video all from within ChatGBT, BT, with many other apps also already offering their own connections.

This will enable a new generation of apps that are interactive, adaptive, and personalized that you can chat with, Sam Altman said. While the Apps SDK is available today in preview, OpenAI said it would not begin accepting new apps within ChatGBTBT or allow them. them to charge users until later this year. ChatGPT in-the-line app access is already rolling out to chatGPT-free plus go and pro users outside of the European Union only for now, with business enterprise and education tiers expected to receive access to the apps later this year. Built on the open source standard model context protocol or MCP introduced by rival Anthropic nearly a year ago, the apps SDK gives third-party developers working independently or on behalf of enterprises large and small, to connect selected data, quote, trigger actions and render a

fully interactive UI, Altman explained during his introductory keynote speech. The Apps SDK includes a talking to apps feature that allows chat GPT and the underlying GPT5 or other O Series models piloting it underneath to obtain updated context from the third-party app or service, so the model, quote, always knows about exactly what your user is interacting with, according to another presenter and OpenAI engineer Alexei Christakis. Developers can build apps that appear in line in chat as lightweight cards or carousels, expand to full screen for immersive tasks like maps, menus, or slides, use picture and picture for live sessions such as video, games, or quizzes. Each mode is designed to preserve chat GPT's minimal, conversational flow while adding interactivity and brand presence.

Christakis showed off early integrations of external app builds atop the app's SDK, including ones from e-learning company Coursera, cloud design software company Canva, and real estate listing and agent connections search engine Zillow. Altman also announced apps SDK integrations with additional partners not demoed officially during the keynote, including booking.com, Expedia, Figma, Spotify, and in documentation said more upcoming partners are on deck, including AllTrails, Peloton, Open Table, Target, the Fork, and Uber representing lifestyle, commerce, and productivity categories, end quote. So they went on to extensively demo how this worked in practice.

In a Coursera example, a simple prompt like Coursera, can you teach me something about machine learning, surfaced an in-chat Coursera login. After signing in, Coursera launched in line and could render full web experiences, including interactive video. Krastaka showed the app's SDK supports picture and picture and full screen and that videos can auto pin to the top so users keep watching while continuing a text conversation with chat GBT below.

Users can also ask questions about what they're saying right now without quoting the video. The agent's SDK streams the relevant segment server side to the model so it can answer in context. He then reopened an older chat about a sibling's dog walking business and asked the Canva app to create a poster for Walk This Wag, specifying Sans Seraphants and a bright colorful style. Instead of the user tweaking a template, chat ChpT issued commands to Canva in the background and returned several designs in line for review and iteration. Next, he asked ChatchipT to expand one slide into a full deck while introducing a Zillow integration. Using ChatGPT's optional memory, it suggested Pittsburgh as a Target City, then pulled up an interactive Zillow map with listings, hover animations, and a full-screen

view offering filters, tour requests, and agent contact, plus a text summary of the actions taken. OpenAI stressed strict app directory standards would be applied. Apps must be useful, predictable, safe for teens, and privacy respecting with clear policies, consent gates, and action disclosures. Developer accounts must be verified and maintained. Design guidelines require apps to follow chat GPT's visual system and accessibility rules. Partners may use logos and accent colors, but cannot alter the core UI or use promotional language. So that is pretty, pretty big news. We'll come back to all that in a second. Open AI also announced Agent Kit, a toolkit for for building and deploying AI agents, including agent builder, which Sam Altman described as like

Canva for building agents. Johnny I've made an appearance, but only spoken vague terms about the quote, family of devices currently under development at OpenAI. Sam Altman said, it will take a while. Altman also broke the news that ChatGPT has reached 800 million weekly active users. Four million developers have, quote, built with OpenAI, and OpenAI processes more than 6 billion tokens per minute on its API. But let's come back to that pretty, pretty big news. Apps inside of ChatGPT is straight up a play to become the operating system of the AI age. And none other than Ben Thompson agrees with that assessment. He calls it OpenAIs play to become the Windows of AI, if you will. Quote, when I started writing Stratecery, Windows was a platform in

decline, superseded by mobile and surprisingly enough increasingly challenged by its all but vanquished ancient foe the Mac. Microsoft needed to make a choice. The days of doing everything were over, and that choice should be services, which is exactly what Sachinadella did. Ever since the emergence of ChatGBTGBT made OpenAI the accidental consumer tech company, I have been making similar arguments about OpenAI. They need to focus on the consumer opportunity and leave the enterprise API market to, say, Microsoft. Not only would Focus help the company capture the consumer opportunity, there was the opportunity cost of GPUs used for the API that couldn't be used to deliver consumers a better experience across every tier.

I now have much more appreciation for OpenAI's insistence on doing it all for two reasons. First, this is a company in pure growth mode, not in decline. Tradeoffs are in the long run inevitable, but why make them before you need to? It would have been a mistake for Microsoft to restrict Windows to only the enterprise in the 1980s, even if the company had to low-key retreat from the consumer market over the last 15 years. There was a lot of money to make before that retreat needed to happen. Open AI, meanwhile, is the hottest brand in AI, so why not make a play to own it all from the consumer touchpoints to API to everything in between?

Second, we've obviously crossed the line into bubble territory, which always was inevitable. The question now is whether or not this is a productive bubble, what durable infrastructure will be built by eventually bankrupt companies that we benefit from four years to come. GPUs are not that durable infrastructure. Data centers are more long-lasting, but not worth the financial pain of a bubble burst. The real payoff would be a massive build-out and power generation, which would be a benefit for the next half a century. Another potential payoff would be the renewed viability of Intel, and as I noted above, Open Eye may be uniquely positioned and motivated to make that happen. More broadly, this play to be the Windows of

AI effectively positions OpenAI as the linchpin of the entire AI buildout. Just look at what the mere announcement of partnerships with OpenAI has done for the stocks of Oracle and AMD. OpenAI is creating the conditions such that it is the primary manifestation of the AI bubble, which ensures the company is the primary beneficiary of all of the speculative capital flooding into the space. Where the company more focused, as I have previously advised, they may not have the leverage to get enough funding to meet those more modest but still incredible goals. Now it's hard to see them not getting whatever money they want, at least until the bubble burst. And interestingly enough, there is an Apple to OpenAI's Microsoft.

It's Google, with their fully integrated stack from chips to data centers to models to end-user distribution channels, instead of taking on a menagerie of competitors. However, Google is facing an increasingly unified ecosystem organized, whether they wish to be or not, around Open AI, such as the power of aggregating demand and the phenomenon that is chat GPT, end quote. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get

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more than $90 billion, could enhance the betting platform's credibility and aid its efforts to reestablish a U.S. presence. Atlanta-based ICE said it would pay for the deal in cash and that it would become a distributor of Polly Market's event-driven data. Investors are increasingly turning to Polly Market for fast-changing probabilities that its betters assigned to future events, such as election results or the length of a government shutdown. Polymarket was founded in 2020 and allows users to bet on yes or no questions about everything from politics and sports to popular culture. It is privately held and counts billionaire Peter Thiel's venture capital firm Founders Fund as an investor. The New York-based company drew attention last year for its betting markets on the presidential election.

Its markets on the November 2024 vote attracted more than $2 billion in trading volume and drew widespread media coverage for correctly anticipating Donald Trump's victory. But Polly Market is banned in several countries as an unlicensed offshore gans. sampling platform. It has been officially off limits to U.S. users since 2022 following a settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during the Biden administration. Days after Trump's election last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the phone of Polly Markets founder and chief executive Shane Coplein. But Pollymarket's relationship with the authorities has improved under the crypto-friendly Trump administration. Coplin in mid-July shared a Bloomberg article on social

media that said Justice Department and CFTC probes into the company had ended, writing, quote, justice prevailed. Donald Trump Jr., the president's son, joined Polymarket's advisory board in August and his venture capital firm. 1789 capital became an investor in the company. Polymarket also acquired a small U.S. licensed exchange and clearinghouse as part of its efforts to reenter the American market. Intercontinental Exchange has a record of jumping on emerging trends in the infrastructure of financial markets. The agreement with polymarket comes as prediction markets are enjoying an upswell of mainstream interest. Calci, a polymarket competitor, which was valued at $2 billion in a recent funding round, has enjoyed record trading volumes in recent weeks due to its contracts

on the new National Football League season. Many of those football bets have been placed by users of Robin Hood-Hood markets, a Calshie partner. Robin Hood and Calhyses' push into sports has prompted an outcry from the gambling industry and state gaming regulators who argue that prediction markets shouldn't be offering sports bets a business traditionally regulated by the states. Intercontinental Exchange also has its own ties to the Trump administration. Its chairman and CEO, Jeffrey Spreecher, is married to Trump ally Kelly Loughler, who serves as administrator of the Small Business Administration and briefly served as a U.S. Senator from Georgia, end quote.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a law banning excessively loud ads on streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. The first such law in the U.S. modeled apparently after a 2010 law, quoting Politico. The new California law is aimed at addressing what the Federal Communications Commission has called a troubling jump in TV ad noise complaints, fueled by streamers airing commercials louder than the shows and movies they accompany. It's modeled off a federal law passed in 2010 that caps ad volumes on cable and broadcast TV but doesn't apply to streaming services. Given the Golden State's massive sway in the entertainment industry, the new law may strong-armed streamers into shushing commercials nationwide. We heard Californians loud and clear, and what's clear is that they don't want commercials out of volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program, Newsom said in a statement.

California is dialing down this inconvenience across streaming platforms. State Senator Tom Umburg, the Orange County Democrat who authored SB 576, said the idea was inspired by his legislative director, Zach Keller, who, who complained that loud streaming commercials were waking up his infant daughter, Samantha. This bill was inspired by baby Samantha and every exhausted parent who's finally gotten a baby to sleep, only to have a blaring streaming ad undo all that hard work, Umburg said in a statement. Umberg's bill faced resistance from Hollywood Giants this summer, the Motion Picture Association and Streaming Innovators Alliance, which together represent entertainment conglomerates, including Disney, Paramount, Amazon, and Netflix,

initially opposed the law arguing that streaming ads come from multiple different sources and are hard to control. The MPA claimed in-house audio engineers were already working on a fix and needed time to solve the issue without facing legal threats. However, the group dropped its opposition after Umburg added legal provisions shielding streamers from lawsuits brought by private parties, leaving enforcement up to the state attorney general's office. The amended bill passed California state legislature with overwhelming support from Democrats and Republicans. Streamers must comply with the new volume limits by July 26, end quote. Finally, this sort of echoes some of my thoughts on SORA and that whole question of AI taking over social media from last week, quoting TechCrunch. Top YouTube creator Mr. Beast is worried about AI's impact on creator's livelihoods despite having dabbled with using the technology himself. On Monday, the creator posted his concerns on social media, where he openly wondered how AI generated videos could affect the, quote, millions of creators currently making content for a living.

scary times, he added. Mr. Beast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is number one on Forbes's 2025 list of top creators with $85 million in earnings and 634 million followers. What he says and does as a result of his position has an outsized influence across the industry. So if Mr. Beast is openly questioning whether AI is an existential threat to his business and others like it, then it's fair to say that even smaller creators are likely even more worried, end quote. for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.