OpenAI enters a special new phase of extreme influence

Sam Altman, CEO OpenAI, photographed in Berlin

IMAGO/BMF via Reuters Connect

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OpenAI is in a special phase. It’s rolling out products and ideas at a rapid clip, and the assumption is that all these projects will work out well and disrupt existing industry players.

It reminds me of the golden days of Google and Amazon, when these fast-growing companies announced new initiatives and the market would immediately react. When Google launched internet balloons, mobile giants like Verizon swooned. When Amazon bought Whole Foods, grocery stocks took a beating.

Some of these projects didn’t work out, and legacy providers rebounded. Other times, the ambitious ideas turned into powerful new businesses, and whole industries crumbled.

This week, OpenAI announced three major things, and each time, Wall Street freaked out. The biggest impact came from ideas that OpenAI isn’t even launching as products, at least yet.

The startup revealed it’s using its own AI-powered tools for workplace tasks such as sales, customer support, and contract analysis. Software such as its Inbound Sales Assistant and DocuGPT shows how AI can automate tasks typically handled by SaaS offerings from companies including HubSpot, DocuSign, and even Salesforce.

While these OpenAI apps aren’t publicly available, their capabilities spooked investors, sending software stocks tumbling. If OpenAI decides to commercialize these tools, it could redefine how enterprise software is built, priced, and integrated.

Morgan Stanley responded swiftly to OpenAI’s new Sora app, a short-form, AI-generated video service modeled after TikTok, highlighting its potential to disrupt the digital attention economy. The firm’s analysts said the new app could be a key pillar in OpenAI’s ambition to build a consumer business beyond subscriptions, particularly in digital advertising.

While they believe Meta and Google are well-positioned to defend their territory, Morgan Stanley warned that smaller platforms such as Snap, Pinterest, and Reddit could face heightened engagement risks.

When OpenAI rolled out a new Instant Checkout feature for ChatGPT on Monday, the entire e-commerce industry took note. It lets millions of ChatGPT users buy items directly in the chatbot interface. Etsy was a launch partner and promptly surged more than 15%.

The long-term impact remains uncertain: agentic commerce may help Etsy better match its long-tail inventory with buyers, but also risks ceding control of the customer experience to OpenAI, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in another note.

Phew. What a week for OpenAI. It’s extremely unusual for a startup to have such profound influence on public markets like this. Some of OpenAI’s ideas may not work out well. Others, like these SaaS tools, might just stay as internal projects.

Despite all that, the past few days showed that OpenAI is on its way to becoming the defining company of this tech era.

Sign up for BI’s Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

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