Who remembers when the annual Apple conference was the most exciting technology event of the year?
Now it’s a spec bump. New camera. Big whoop. The magic is happening somewhere else. Fort Mason in San Fransisco (thank god, it’s not another iPhone launch).
OpenAI’s DevDay 2025.
I think it’s safe to say (with a slight hint of hyperbole), that the tooling released is designed to replace the entire concept of software as we know it.
I am so here for it. The attempt to control the future of human productivity. I love it
What an absolute platform play from the titans of tech.
The platform play
OpenAI just announced their transformation from AI company to OS for Intelligence.
They’re narrative looks pretty compelling.
Seven interconnected products, 800 million weekly users, and a business model that lends itself to the future of outcome based pricing (see my article here).
It’s been working so far. They’re killing it.
4 million developers (doubled in two years)
6 billion API tokens per minute (30x growth since 2023)
$89 billion projected revenue by 2030 (conservative estimate)
But here’s what I think most missed. It isn’t about artificial intelligence, but capitalism.
The creation of a new economic system where a handful of platform owners control the means of cognitive production.
Sounds smart. Really it is quite simple.
It’s a platform play.
Own the rails.
Basically, be Google.
The Apps SDK
Think of it like Facebook’s news feed on steroids.
Remember when Facebook’s News Feed brutally turned publishers into renters on the Facebook feed?
OpenAI’s Apps SDK just literally going to do that to the entire software industry.
With the Model Context Protocol and Agentic Commerce Protocol, OpenAI is positioning themselves as the middleman for every software interaction on earth.
Canva, Zillow and Spotify (~18 launch partners) have already bent the knee, agreeing to share revenue and embed their entire user experience inside ChatGPT.
“King in the North, King in the North, King in the North!”
Yep. I’m a GOT fan.
If this pans out for OpenAI, they will become the new iOS, except instead of apps on your phone, it’s intelligence in your workflows.
Every business process. Every creative task. Every analytical decision.
Just think about those sweet, sweet transaction fees and data.
The TAM for this play? $285.6 billion in enterprise AI alone by 2030.
They might actually get a chance to repay those IOU’s for GPU’s, with that sort of market size.
No longer will you be switching to Canva to create a Social Media post, graphic, etc.
But there was an even cooler one shown. One that I think really shows it’s power as an OS.
Imagine you’re looking for a house. You go on Zillow (or Domain for us).
Well, the OS can basically sit on the side, and provide access, data and context to houses, that Zillow just wouldn’t have.
Think of it like a buyers agent sitting right next to you, whilst you peruse the feed (without the commission).
That’s just one use case.
Ultimately, the more time you spend on ChatGPT, the better it becomes, the more utility it offers, the less you’re likely to go anywhere else.
Also, it’s probably going to be the BIGGEST black hole of data. They will have so many data from all types of applications flowing through.
Danger ahead, apps who use this. ChatGPT might be coming for your customers.
They’ve already come for your UX.
AgentKit
Remember Zapier, n8n or Workato?
Felcia, bye.
Another set of tech darlings obliterated (hyperbole).
This kit is basically a competing visual workflow builder that let companies create AI employees in hours instead of months.
It’s already worked pretty well in their beta.
Ramp reduced agent development time by 70%.
Cisco deployed enterprise-wide coding assistants.
Deloitte deployed Claude (Anthropic’s competitor) to 470,000 employees.
Yes. Yawn. Workflows.
Not a new concept.
But. It’s a powerful one.
$890.5 billion in annual value creation from business process automation alone. OpenAI’s positioned to capture $222.6 billion of that through platform fees.
A small nation’s GDP.
Now tell me that’s a snooze-fest announcement?
The $15 Token
Let’s talk about GPT-5 Pro and what I’m going to call “The Cognitive Rolex Strategy.”
At $15 per million tokens (50% premium over standard pricing), it ain’t cheap.
In fact, OpenAI just created the luxury end of artificial intelligence.
Finance firms, law firms, healthcare organisations or anyone whose mistakes cost millions will pay premium prices for premium thinking.
To this point in time, it’s been a race to the bottom.
“Models are becoming a commodity”.
“The price of intelligence is diminishing”.
“The moats are disappearing”.
Not to make myself sound too Australian here, but, “yeah nah”.
GPT-Pro is a Rolex.
Luxury goods have the highest margins and create the strongest brand moats.
When Goldman Sachs is paying $15 for AI reasoning that costs OpenAI pennies to provide, you’re selling cognitive insurance.
Can’t wait to flex my GPT-5 Pro $200 p/m subscription to my potential suitors.
Form a line ladies.
Meanwhile, gpt-realtime-mini and gpt-image-1-mini (70% and 80% cost reductions respectively) will flood the market with cheap AI capabilities, creating the same dynamic that made smartphones ubiquitous. Premium products for enterprise customers, commodity versions for everyone else.
The playbook is a classic platform economics play. Subsidise the bottom to capture market share, extract maximum value from the top where switching costs are highest.
Sora 2
Humans are visual creatures.
Some of the outputs of this model, are completely indistinguishable from reality.
Truly. Check them out if you get a chance.
If you work in video production, animation, or visual content creation, Sora 2’s API availability probably just put an expiration date on your career.
“Come with me, as I go to Bondi Beach and get an Acai”.
No. Not anymore.
Sora 2, is not AI-assisted creativity. It’s not relying on human creativity.
We’re talking about full-stack video production. Conception to final cut. Handled by algorithms that never sleep, never demand residuals, and improve every day.
(… and an end to this format).
Mattel is already using it for product conceptualisation.
How long before Netflix realises they can produce content without writers, directors, or actors? The entire creative economy is $125.4 billion in annual value.
Is it about to be ‘platformed’?
OpenAI’s positioned to capture $50.2 billion of creative industry value through their platform.
When your sugar daddy gets wandering eyes
But. OpenAI does have an existential vulnerability that should terrify investors.
It’s called Microsoft Bing.
Lol, just kidding. Not Bing.
But, Microsoft as their primary cloud provider, distribution partner and $10 billion sugar daddy just integrated Anthropic’s Claude into Office 365.
430 million Office 365 users now have access to OpenAI’s primary competitor, directly contradicting OpenAI’s platform strategy.
A bit of a Slack vs Teams story. We all know how that ended.
If you don’t… never compete with free.
When your biggest partner starts hedging their bets, you’re no longer a strategic asset.
Microsoft discovered that Claude outperformed GPT-5 in productivity tasks like Excel automation and PowerPoint generation. In platform capitalism, performance trumps partnerships.
The Apps SDK is OpenAI’s desperate attempt to reduce Microsoft dependency by creating independent distribution through ChatGPT’s user base.
OpenAI is building their own iOS because they can’t trust being an app forever.
There’s also direct competition.
Google’s $2T war chest vs. Anthropic’s enterprise focus
The competition isn’t sleeping.
While OpenAI chases platform dominance, Anthropic is capturing enterprise customers one Fortune 500 company at a time.
Commonwealth Bank: 50% reduction in scam losses
IG Group: 70 hours weekly saved per employee
SK Telecom: 34% customer service improvement
Anthropic’s strategy is to be the “safe choice” for risk-averse enterprises while OpenAI experiments with platform moonshots. When enterprise customers are paying $28.5 billion annually (OpenAI’s projection for GPT-5 Pro revenue), losing even 20% of that market to competitors creates massive downside risk.
Google’s counter-play leverages their 2 billion Workspace users. In fact, their base is 8x larger than ChatGPT’s user base. When Google embeds AI directly into Gmail, Docs, and Drive, they don’t need a platform strategy.
They already ARE the platform.
OpenAI must simultaneously execute flawlessly across technical development, business model innovation, competitive responses, regulatory compliance, and market timing.
The historical pattern is clear:
Industrial revolution: Those who owned factories controlled manufacturing.
Information age: Those who owned platforms controlled distribution.
Intelligence age: Those who own AI platforms control cognitive labor itself.
The economic transformation:
2025-2027: AI augmentation (75% human, 25% AI work).
2027-2030: AI orchestration (55% human, 45% AI work).
2030-2035: AI-native organisations (35% human, 65% AI work).
I think OpenAI has roughly 18 months to achieve platform lock-in before competitive dynamics make dominance mathematically impossible.
Four Scenarios for 2030
Scenario 1
OpenAI achieves network effects lock-in. They become the cognitive infrastructure for global economy.
$180 billion revenue, 35% market share.
The new oil, the new rails.
Choo choo.
Scenario 2 (my pick)
The competitive fragmentation Google, Anthropic, and Microsoft prevent OpenAI dominance.
Market splits between specialised players.
$95 billion revenue, 25% market share.
Still valuable, no longer inevitable.
Scenario 3
The platform wars competition drives margin compression.
Enterprise customers resist platform lock-in.
$45 billion revenue, 15% market share.
Profitable but not transformational.
Scenario 4
The AI winter driven by technical limitations or market correction deflates AI valuations.
$15 billion revenue, 5% market share.
The dot-com crash of artificial intelligence.
Bubble pop.
Delayed AGI.
GRIM.
My prediction
My prediction is scenario 2. That, by 2030, three companies will control 70% of global AI infrastructure. The rest will be digital sharecroppers, paying platform fees for access to intelligence itself. The concentration of cognitive power will make today’s wealth gaps look like rounding errors.
One thing is very clear. OpenAI just placed a $4 trillion bet on platform capitalism’s final evolution.
Capitalism, I choose you.
Whether they win or lose, we all live with the consequences. Welcome to the Intelligence Age.
Check your human privilege at the door.
Until next time,
Blake.