Sam Altman is Coming for Apple's App Store

WSJ Tech News Briefing

The Wall Street Journal

Tech News, News

4.3 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2026

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

According to Sam Altman, OpenAI’s biggest rival isn’t Google, it’s Apple. WSJ reporter Rolfe Winkler says the AI startup has big ambitions to displace the App Store by growing into an operating system powerful enough to let you access the apps you use every day, from Uber to Instacart, without ever leaving ChatGPT. Plus, WSJ personal tech columnist Nicole Nguyen breaks down how AI might help you (finally) stick with your fitness resolutions. Patrick Coffee hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free Technology newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	AI is transforming industries, but the data centers powering it require more energy and water than ever.
0:06.0	At the break, join Christoph Beck, chairman and CEO of EcoLab, for insights on using water effectively
0:11.5	while safeguarding this critical resource for future generations.
0:18.8	Welcome to Tech News Briefing.
0:23.8	It's Tuesday, January 6th, 2026.
0:26.5	I'm Patrick Coffey for the Wall Street Journal.
0:30.8	It's the beginning of a new year, and according to Pew Research Center,
0:36.4	nearly 80% of U.S. adults will make a New Year's resolution about health, diet, or exercise.
0:39.4	We at Tech News Briefing promise not to judge you for falling off that fitness wagon, but could an AI coach help make your resolution
0:44.6	stick? Then, how would you like to use one app for literally everything? And what if that app just
0:51.2	happens to be chat GPT? OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hopes that will be the case.
0:57.2	We're diving into Altman's long shot bid to make an app store to rival apples.
1:04.2	But first, it's early January and your fitness resolution seemed totally realistic for now.
1:12.3	But by the end of the month,
1:18.2	those plans to work out for an hour a day, five days a week may look a bit more daunting. So you could probably use a little extra kick in the butt from your friendly neighborhood large language model.
1:23.5	But can robots really help you get stronger at your convenience without costing you a small
1:27.9	fortune or landing you in the doctor's office?
1:30.6	Journal columnist Nicole Nguyen tested three AI-driven fitness tools to see how effective they
1:36.4	were at helping a busy, professional parent with healthy aspiration stay on track.
1:41.8	Nicole, how specific and helpful were the apps in terms of telling you what you need to do to meet your goals and with correcting your form, things like that?
1:51.0	So I'll start with Fitbit's new personal health coach, which is an experimental feature that's powered by Gemini. Fitbit is owned by Google and Gemini is powered by Google and so it's
2:02.9	a natural integration. When you open the Fitbit app, there's this new bubble called Ask Coach. And you can
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