OpenAI is trying to become the next big tech platform, and it’s been rolling out a host of new products, tools, and features to appeal to developers, including a new AI-flavored App Store.
Richard Murby, whom I met while waiting in a long line to get into OpenAI’s DevDay conference last week, agrees. He’s the director of business development at Devpost, which helps developers participate in hackathons.
I asked Murby how OpenAI is appealing to developers and what it still has to do to challenge Apple and Google. This Q&A has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: From what you witnessed at DevDay, is OpenAI now a force to be reckoned with in the minds of developers? Or does it still have work to do here?
They deserve massive credit for changing the world with the first generative AI consumer product and providing the model that powered GitHub Copilot, but it’s far from won. From our vantage point at Devpost, they are in a race for developer engagement and trust, and that’s exactly the problem we help companies solve. (Full disclosure, we work with OpenAI and their competitors.) The speed of innovation means that developers have numerous options, and the companies that win are those that can cut through the noise and get developers’ hands on their tools.
Q: Take me inside the mind of a developer. Why would they be clamoring to engage with OpenAI? What’s the payoff for developers to build things on this nascent/emerging platform?
The modern developer’s toolkit is astonishingly rich. GenAI offers a direct payoff for most developers, assisting them with everything from bug fixes to feature development. This speed and utility mean that they, and their executives, want to leverage this technology now.
OpenAI is competing to be a developer’s default choice. They’ve provided top-quality models and continue to expand what’s available in the API, but the real game-changer is the new app directory and SDK. This is a clear signal that OpenAI is attempting to create a platform where developers can find users and earn revenue, much like Apple did with the App Store.
Q: What are the drawbacks for developers building on OpenAI’s platform? What did you see on Monday that changes this situation, if anything?
With such fierce competition and an intense pace of innovation, the primary challenge for developers is simply keeping up. They face a strategic dilemma: do they go all-in on one platform, or do they spread their bets across multiple tools? This is compounded by the fact that new AI benchmarks are surpassed almost weekly by different competitors, and internal security and IT teams can only ingest so many new tools at once.
In the meantime, as the race is on, developers are utilizing these tools both at work and in their free time. This is why hackathons are so critical—they provide a dedicated space for companies to test tools and for developers to gain hands-on experience, all while providing valuable feedback. This is our specialty, and it is a key component of a successful developer strategy.
From what we saw on Monday, OpenAI is making a significant statement that it wants to be the next platform. Their investments in infrastructure, the new app directory, and a new coding agent all signal that they are here to stay and want to be the default choice for developers.
Q: How far away is OpenAI from challenging the current major platforms, Apple iOS, Google Android etc? What’s missing or different here?
The comparison to Apple and Google is a red herring. What OpenAI is doing is not a traditional platform play — it’s a straight-up attempt to build the dominant conversational operating system of the future. The platform is moving from the device to the conversation itself. This is a massive new challenge: creating a community of developers that will build on top of this conversational platform, regardless of the device. That’s a new frontier, and I feel incredibly fortunate to be a part of it and see how it unfolds.
Q: What else struck you from DevDay?
One of the things Jony Ive said really stuck with me. To paraphrase, “Why would we run this new generation of technology through the last generation’s interfaces?”
That’s a brilliantly simple and profound thought that makes me incredibly excited to find out what they are working on. I just really wish they had told us!
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