Ep 799: AI SuperApps: Why Every Company is Racing to Create One and What They are

**Everyday AI** (0:01)
This is the Everyday AI Show, the Everyday Podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life.

**Jordan Wilson** (0:16)
Any hour or day or week now, we'll get an official announcement from OpenAI that signals the biggest AI pivot we've seen since Chat GPT, and that's the official rollout of their AI super app. So the Chat GPT parent company, now with 1 billion weekly active users, made headlines recently when a senior executive, off the record, at least said three words to a reporter that will probably echo for months. Chat is dead. So any day we'll get the official announcement of OpenAI's new super app, their push to bring an autonomous co-worker to millions of companies. But it's not just OpenAI making this push. Actually, Anthropic started the wave many months ago with their rollout of Claude Code and Claude Cowork and every other big tech challenger is racing to get their version of an AI super app some momentum. Google released theirs in Anti-Gravity 2.0, Cursor has quietly become a serious contender in the space, and Microsoft also announced their upcoming super app as well. But that begs the obvious question, what the heck is a super app and why should my company take note? Well, we're going to tackle the latest work layer shift on today's show. So welcome to Everyday AI and our Start Here series, but let's go over the big picture of what's happening now. So Anthropic started this desktop, a Gentic era with Claude Code and Claude Cowork in late 2025 and early 2026 But Anthropic hasn't really been able to build off of that momentum, at least when it comes to being the big name in the room, when it comes to an AI super app. And I think OpenAI's super app, which is essentially Codex, right? And it will be a little more tightly integrated into ChatGPT, will be coming any day. And I think that's really gonna set the tone for this big pivot to the super app era, right? And Microsoft, I think, especially when you have OpenAI and Microsoft in the coming weeks or months, shifting most of their agentic focus to a super app, I think the rest of the enterprise really needs to pay attention.
So on today's show, we're gonna be diving into, and stick with me for the next 25 minutes, and here's what you're gonna learn, why Anthropic started the super app race, but they have kind of fallen out of immediate contention. You're gonna know why the models are no longer the moat, and the super app harness matters more than ever. And you're gonna kind of know the state of the super app race, at least as it stands right now, right before we officially get it all kicked off. All right, let's get into it. Welcome to the Start Here series. This is Everyday AI's Essential Podcast series, both learn the AI basics and to double down on your knowledge. So if that's what you're trying to do, we're at the tail end of the Start Here series. Right now we're in episode, what are we on now? We're on volume 28 of this. So we'll probably do two more and wrap it at 30 But if you don't know the Start Here series, it's great. I would say start at volume one if you can and work your way up to where we are now. They're usually quicker episodes, about 30 minutes give or take, but make sure you go to starthereseries.com. There, we put together a playlist where you can listen to every single episode of the Start Here series so you don't have to go fishing around our website or anything like that. And that's also going to give you exclusive access to our Inner Circle Community. Yeah, right now, that's the only way to get open access to it. So you can not only sign up for our free Inner Circle Community, which gives you access as well to our Prime Prompt Polish version three course to learn Context Engineering 101 at your own pace, but also all of the Start Here series info. All right. And make sure if you didn't listen to our last episode, I think it's an important one in the Start Here series, which was volume 27 We went over the token maxing era and how it's over and talking about the new era of token efficiency and how your company should adapt. So make sure you go check that out. That's volume 27 or episode 789 But let's get into today's topic, which is the AI super app. So what the heck is an AI super app and why does it matter? Well, I'll say this, even though I don't think we've quote unquote arrived in the super app era per se, I will say it's safe to assume this is the next version. All right. And it is funny because we started the Start Here series in January and we've actually seen kind of two shifts. So I think the first shift we saw in January was models becoming more and more agentic by default and saying, hey, how the future of work is not reactively talking to AI chatbots. It's knowing how these models work, scheduling things out. Right. And then we also had another episode talking about something I called agentic context carry. Right. And that is the crucial role that not just models, but the harness that control the models play in taking context from your certain apps. Right. So to boil this down to the basics here, right. One of the biggest advantages of not just the upcoming super app era, but where we're at now, right. Before Microsoft and OpenAI start really highlighting and promoting their super apps, right. Where we're at now is we do have a system that can carry our context autonomously, right. So a lot of what the human duct tape work has been over the last two years, is us humans who do use large language models, is giving a chat our context, right. Connecting, whether it was static files, dynamically shifting things. But then it's a lot of copying and pasting from different AI systems. But now, as these systems are living on our desktop and becoming more autonomous, that does leave, kind of lead into the next wave, going beyond this agentic context carry. And that's where the agents ultimately live, which is the desktop OS, right. That is where I think the super apps are going to play. And I don't know if this is going to be the quote unquote final frontier of the agentic era, as we have officially entered into it. It may look a little bit different, but I do think at least the companies that are going to be most successful in late 2026 and early 2027 are those that are going to be investing in their companies using these super app systems on the desktop.