ChatGPT app store falters six months after launch
Six months after its launch, OpenAI's GPT Store—a marketplace for custom ChatGPT chatbots—is struggling with low usage, quality control issues, and developer dissatisfaction, raising questions about the platform's long-term viability.
Background
- The "GPT Store" is OpenAI's marketplace for custom ChatGPT variants ("GPTs") tuned for specific tasks. Launched with fanfare, it was modeled on Apple's App Store — a bet that third-party AI apps would become a big business.
- Six months in, the store is struggling: users find it hard to discover quality GPTs, many listings are spammy or shallow, and developers see little money. This suggests the "custom AI agent" model hasn't found a fit yet.
- Why it matters: OpenAI's valuation partly depends on growing beyond the chatbot into a platform where others build and sell. A weak store could push the company to focus on its own products (search, enterprise, voice) instead.
- Background: Rivals like Google (Gemini extensions), Anthropic (tool-use API), and Microsoft (Copilot) are all trying to solve the same puzzle — how to let developers usefully build on top of large language models. The GPT Store's trouble hints that slapping a thin wrapper on a chatbot isn't enough to create a real app economy.