OpenAI has appointed Thibault Sottiaux as head of core products, tasking him with overhauling ChatGPT into what the company is calling a “super app” — a single, personalized AI agent designed to handle tasks across users’ personal and professional lives. The appointment was announced in 2026, with Sottiaux now reporting directly to cofounder Greg Brockman.
Sottiaux previously led the development of Codex, OpenAI’s AI coding tool, which has become one of the company’s fastest-growing revenue streams. His new role expands that responsibility significantly: he now oversees both ChatGPT and Codex, with the goal of merging them into the planned super app. ChatGPT currently has nearly a billion weekly active users.
The super app concept draws on models like WeChat, which bundles messaging, payments, and shopping into one platform, but OpenAI says it is aiming for something broader. Sottiaux described the goal as building the “world’s best personal agent that deeply understands what humans care about,” adding that ChatGPT will become “delightfully proactive” over the next year. “It’s incredibly exciting and mildly terrifying at the same time,” he said.
To consolidate around this strategy, OpenAI has already shut down several stand-alone products, including its video app Sora and an AI platform for scientists. A number of executives who led those teams have since left the company.
Sottiaux grew up in Belgium and studied applied mathematics before joining Google’s London offices in 2015, working on Google Maps and later Google DeepMind, where he helped build infrastructure used to develop AlphaGo. He joined OpenAI in 2024, initially building internal research tools before pivoting to Codex.
OpenAI is pursuing the super app strategy as it moves toward an IPO and faces competition from Google and Anthropic. The company’s bet is that a single, deeply personalized assistant could help it establish a leading position across consumer and enterprise markets.
Source: WIRED