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OpenAI has been gearing up to take on Google and Microsoft with features that let people collaborate on documents and communicate via chat in ChatGPT, according to two people who have seen the designs.

Launching these features would pit OpenAI more directly against Microsoft, its biggest shareholder and business partner, as well as open a new front in its battle with Google, whose search engine has already lost traffic to people using ChatGPT for web searches. Exactly whether or if OpenAI will release the features isn’t clear, however.

The new features reflect OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s strategy to make ChatGPT a “supersmart personal assistant for work,” as he has put it, even though the app is primarily aimed at consumers. The designs for collaboration features suggest OpenAI could consider developing related productivity features such as file storage.

OpenAI and Microsoft already compete for business customers in selling AI assistants, coding assistants and AI models accessed via application programming interface by more advanced developers.

But if OpenAI goes ahead with the new features, targeting the heart of Microsoft’s dominant suite of productivity apps, it could strain the companies’ already complicated relationship. OpenAI is trying to get Microsoft to sign off on the startup’s plan to restructure its for-profit unit, which oversees ChatGPT. Both companies are angling to get major concessions from one another in the process.

An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment.

The collaboration features would be a natural extension of how people use ChatGPT and consistent with OpenAI’s efforts to control the gateways through which consumers and enterprises use the web or get work done. Those efforts include developing a personal AI device, designing a web browser, and developing a social media feed, similar to X (formerly Twitter) for ChatGPT customers to publicly share images or other content.

Collaboration tools and file storage could make ChatGPT more attractive to businesses, which have been purchasing subscriptions to the chatbot. Companies prefer to buy a bundle of productivity apps, such as Microsoft Office and Google Workspace, for their workforces. And the bundles Microsoft and Google sell now include AI assistant features that resemble those of ChatGPT.

Inside OpenAI, leaders such as product chief Kevin Weil first discussed and showed off designs for the document collaboration feature nearly a year ago, one of the people said. But OpenAI didn’t have enough people to develop the product, given there were other priorities at the time, according to another person with knowledge of the situation.

But in October, OpenAI launched Canvas, a ChatGPT feature that makes it easier for people to draft documents and code with AI, a possible first step towards the launch of the collaboration features. (The document collaboration designs suggest OpenAI could also develop collaboration tools for coders.)

More recently, OpenAI developed but hasn’t launched software allowing multiple ChatGPT customers to communicate about their shared work in the app, the first person said.

OpenAI recently launched a notetaking tool that can record calls or meetings and drops notes about them into Canvas, though it is of limited value because ChatGPT doesn’t offer file storage and other basic productivity features.

The company says it has increasingly generated revenue from team- or companywide ChatGPT subscriptions at firms including Moderna and T-Mobile. OpenAI recently offered discounts on such subscriptions, much to the chagrin of Microsoft workers who sell competing applications.

OpenAI has projected roughly $15 billion in revenue from business subscriptions to ChatGPT in 2030, up from $600 million in revenue in 2024.