2026 marks the year OpenAI accelerates. Leaks suggest the AI giant is building a “super app” — an all-in-one platform merging chat, payments, search, and services. It’s a model we’ve seen in China with WeChat, now coming to the Western ecosystem. The message is clear: a single entry point for millions of users and businesses.
For Europe, and especially Italy, this is not just a tech story. It’s a strategic warning. If a US-owned super app becomes the default, European SMEs will depend on a proprietary infrastructure they don’t control. We’ve seen it happen with social platforms: opaque algorithms, sudden policy changes, data turned into currency. A super app multiplies the risk: transactions, communications, sensitive data — all in one silo.
Our position is clear: owning your stack beats renting it.
We, at Meteora Web, have worked for years with companies that chose open, modular platforms — WordPress, Laravel, custom solutions. Not because we oppose innovation, but because vendor lock-in is a risky economic choice. We come from accounting: we know that a fixed subscription on a platform you don’t own is a growing liability. OpenAI’s super app will likely be convenient, but convenience is never synonymous with freedom. In Italy, where the digital divide is both geographical and cultural, handing your business over to a single big tech means giving up autonomy.
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We’re not asking to block innovation. We’re asking for clear rules. Europe’s Digital Markets Act is a first step, but it must be enforced forcefully: mandatory interoperability, data portability, a ban on self-preferencing. Moreover, Europe must invest in open alternatives, supporting projects like Gaia-X but also local initiatives. Italy has technical talent — think of the many digital SMEs like ours — but it lacks a strategy to connect them.
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What to do? For developers: build architectures that don’t rely on a single provider. Open APIs, standards, modularity. For business owners: calculate the real cost of a platform — not just in euros, but in data control and future flexibility. For policymakers: stop chasing big tech and impose conditions that protect the single European market. OpenAI’s super app is coming. The question is whether we will use it on our own terms — or just endure it.
