M.G. Siegler • #microsoft • Jun 2, 2026

The Summer of 'Super Apps'

Microsoft races to get the one Copilot to rule them all out the door...

Goodbye peach. Goodbye cloud blob. Hello "super app". At their Build conference keynote later today, Microsoft is widely expected to unveil a number of things, including new in-house AI models, Windows 11 tweaks, more about their 'Surface Laptop Ultra' NVIDIA-powered machines – but the thing I'm most interested in is their attempt at this Copilot "super app":

The software giant is working on a one-stop shop that would connect its GitHub Copilot coding assistant, Copilot chat function, Copilot Cowork tool, and a new agentic workflow capability internally named Autopilot into a single app, according to two sources familiar with the project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a platform that hasn’t yet been released. The project is being spearheaded by Jacob Andreou, Microsoft’s recently appointed head of Copilot. One of Andreou’s primary tasks has been to unite the consumer and enterprise sides of Copilot into a cohesive product.

Some elements of the app, which is being developed internally with the slogan “Delivering one Copilot,” could be referenced at Microsoft’s Build developer conference next week in San Francisco, though there are no plans to showcase the app itself. The company plans to launch the super app by the end of summer. The plans for the super app could evolve and are not yet final, the sources said, but the idea is to be able to combine a user’s Copilots into one central interface, including accounts from the productivity-focused Microsoft 365 Copilot.

I'm shocked, shocked that the strategy of having 17 different versions of Copilot across 17 different surfaces (including yes, Surfaces) hasn't worked out for Microsoft. "Delivering one Copilot" is obviously the right approach and messaging. And yes, that puts Microsoft in the camp with Meta, X, Coinbase, Airbnb, Uber, Snap, Spotify – even Disney in going after the elusive (at least in the West) "super app" concept. And assuming the timeline above is right, they'll be in a footrace to get their take out the door with, who else? OpenAI.

I joked last week that it looked like Microsoft's IP rights with OpenAI may have included CSS files when a leaked image of the new Copilot looked a lot like ChatGPT. And by "a lot" I meant "exactly". Per above, gone was the peachy hues of the previous consumer-facing Copilot – seemingly derived from Pi, the first and only product from Inflection, the team Microsoft "hackquired" in the first such deal. Hardly a surprise that Mustafa Suleyman tried to make Pi happen within Microsoft, but also hardly a surprise that it didn't work. And now hardly a surprise that he's been reassigned elsewhere, to work on the frontier models he spent much of the past couple years insisting Microsoft wasn't interested in making.

Anyway, a couple days later, Alex Heath seemingly got a better leaked screenshot of the Copilot "super app". And actually, it looks less like ChatGPT and more like Claude – almost exactly like Anthropic's own "super app" right down to the toggles. Sure, they have four rather than three options, but you can chalk that up to Microsoft being Microsoft. Gotta clutter where you can. I will say kudos on the "Autopilot" naming – a clever riff to convey agentic work.

I think it's interesting how the design of all of these services has collapsed into the same basic one. While they all started trying to be a bit different, visually, clearly ChatGPT's "chatbot" paradigm won the day, at least for now. And Apple is apparently about to be included on that list too, when the new Siri app – and actually, the first Siri actual app – is unveiled at WWDC. Apple tried to keep Siri as a more nebulous system-wide thing, but again, clearly the chat app idea is what users expect right now. We'll see if that changes if/when the first true AI devices built around voice start hitting the market...

It sounds like we will indeed hear more about this new Copilot in the Build keynote, but likely just a preview as Microsoft races OpenAI to get the "super app" out the door and into the hands of consumers/developers this Summer.

Which do you prefer: ChatGPT Copilot or Claude Copilot?

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Previously, on Spyglass...