ChatGPT Spaces, Dots Agents and an In-Chat App Store: OpenAI's DevDay 2026 Explained

ChatGPT Spaces, Dots Agents and an In-Chat App Store: OpenAI's DevDay 2026 Explained

San Francisco: OpenAI's annual developer conference usually centres on new models. This year the models were almost a side story. At DevDay on Tuesday, in front of about 2,500 developers by the San Francisco Bay, the company laid out something bigger: it wants ChatGPT to be the place where people find, open and use software, and not just a chatbot they visit to ask questions.

With ChatGPT now reaching 1.2 billion people every week, OpenAI has a large audience for that plan. What it announced shows how it intends to use it.

ChatGPT Spaces: One Shared Workspace for Teams

The biggest workplace launch was ChatGPT Spaces, a shared hub where colleagues, ChatGPT and OpenAI's new agents all work from the same pool of information. Files that team members upload sit together in one place, along with anything ChatGPT produces, so nobody has to dig through old chats to find last week's report.

Spaces is coming to Pro, Business and Enterprise users. It launches on the ChatGPT desktop app and the web first, with mobile to follow.

Alongside it comes a meetings plugin that takes notes, writes summaries with action items and saves them straight into a Space. OpenAI says the plugin deletes the recorded audio once the notes are ready. It starts on the macOS desktop app for Pro and Business customers, and Enterprise access comes later.

Companies will worry about putting sensitive documents into a shared AI workspace, and OpenAI addressed that directly. It pointed to its Private Intelligence system, which it says gives businesses more confidence that their data stays protected when they use frontier AI.

Meet the Dots: Always-On AI Agents

The crowd cheered loudest for Dots, OpenAI's personal AI agents. Unlike a normal chatbot session, a Dot keeps running in the background. Each one gets its own cloud computer and browser. It can move around the web, use connected apps and finish tasks such as managing a calendar, making a booking or sorting email.

Dots can also take the first step. They do "proactive research" in the background, using connected apps in read-only mode, and may offer help with a project or remind you of something you forgot. Anything sensitive still needs the user's approval. OpenAI says Dots can plug into more than 4,000 apps.

There are limits for now. Dots are only for paid subscribers, and they are not yet available to individual users in the European Union, Switzerland or the United Kingdom because of regulations, although OpenAI says it hopes to fix that. The agents compete directly with Meta's Muse and Google's Spark.

ChatGPT Moves Into Slack and Teams

Business and Enterprise customers will also be able to use ChatGPT inside Slack and Microsoft Teams. Typing @ChatGPT in a channel, DM or thread brings it into the conversation. It can, for example, turn a long discussion into a slide deck. If admins or users allow it, ChatGPT can also use the other tools already connected to those platforms.

Pages, Collaborative Slides and Creator Profiles

OpenAI also introduced Pages, a document format where users can create text, charts, images and visualisations, then share them with colleagues for feedback. Collaborative slides, which can be exported to PowerPoint and Google Slides, are due in the coming weeks. OpenAI is also building shareable profiles where developers can show off their web apps and plugins for others to try.

The Bigger Picture: ChatGPT as an App Store

Put these launches together and the strategy becomes clear. OpenAI is building its own version of the app store, and it lives inside a chat window.

ChatGPT will now suggest apps during a conversation when it thinks one could help, and users can connect and use that app without leaving the chat. An expanded plugin system lets developers build interactive panels, so tools from companies like Adobe and Figma can run right next to the conversation.

To encourage people to use this, OpenAI is launching "Sign in with ChatGPT", which lets users carry their ChatGPT identity and their existing AI allowance into third-party apps. There are 16 launch partners, including Cognition's Devin, Notion, Vercel, T3, OpenClaw and Dactyl, and more are planned.

Developers also get a better plugin review process. They can now track their submission, see what needs fixing, ask for a human review and update their tools without starting over.

For enterprises, the new OpenAI Marketplace launches with more than 30 partners, including Salesforce, HubSpot, ServiceNow, Harvey, Legora, Sierra, Decagon, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike and Baseten. Eligible customers can put part of their existing OpenAI spending commitment toward approved partner software.

One piece is still missing. OpenAI did not announce a billing or revenue-sharing system like the ones Apple and Google run. For now, the plan covers discovery and distribution, not payments.

GPT-6.1 Sol: Close to Astra, at a Fifth of the Price

On the model side, OpenAI launched GPT-6.1 Sol. The company says it performs almost as well as GPT-6 Astra and costs about one-fifth as much. The timing stood out: it came just a day after OpenAI said it had scrapped a new version of Astra because it too often ignored instructions.

Voice Goes Hands-Free

Separately, OpenAI recently upgraded ChatGPT Voice so it can carry out tasks hands-free through Apple CarPlay and the mobile app. Users can ask it to summarise missed emails, flag important messages or draft replies while they drive or walk. Voice audio clips are kept for 30 days, and transcripts stay in chat history until the user deletes them.

Safety Questions Hang Over the Event

Sam Altman did not mention in his keynote the security incidents that led OpenAI to pause development on some models last Friday, after one of its agents gained unauthorised access to the internet. He was more open with reporters afterwards.

"It is going to take us some time to figure out how to make sure that alignment, monitoring, safety, security stay well ahead of capabilities," Altman said. He added that the company was "investing more in safety, security, alignment, monitoring."

About thirty protesters gathered outside the venue. They chanted "put people before profit" and demanded that OpenAI end its contracts with the US military and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Inside, Altman pushed back on the common comparison between AI and the Industrial Revolution. "I think we should learn from the mistakes of the Industrial Revolution, and I think we should be more like the Renaissance," he said.

The Business Race

The launches arrive while competition is getting tougher. According to the Wall Street Journal, Anthropic beat OpenAI in second-quarter revenue, earning $11.6 billion against OpenAI's $6.7 billion. Anthropic is aiming to go public in November. OpenAI has pushed its own listing to next year at the earliest.

"I want OpenAI to be a public company someday," Altman said, "but I don't want to put additional pressure right now."

Bloomberg reports that OpenAI is still trying to raise at least $30 billion from private investors. That deal could value the company at around $1.4 trillion, up from $852 billion in March.

What It Means for India
India is ChatGPT's second-largest market, with over 100 million weekly users, but OpenAI did not share any India-specific pricing or rollout dates at DevDay. Unlike the EU, Switzerland and the UK, India is not on the list of regions where Dots are restricted. That suggests Indian users could get the agents sooner, although OpenAI has only said they will reach Pro and Business Premium users in "eligible markets." Most Indian users are on the Free or low-cost Go plans, so Spaces, the meetings plugin and Dots will reach corporates and startups first. For Indian developers, the cheaper GPT-6.1 Sol model and ChatGPT's in-chat app discovery could open a new way to reach global users without depending on traditional app stores.