Over the last four years, Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, which has also raised money from other investors. The San Francisco start-up is in talks to finalize a deal that would value it at over $80 billion.

Seasoned software developers have long used ChatGPT’s underlying technology, GPT-4, to build their own applications, including search engines and automated tutors. The app store is a way for a new audience — individuals and small businesses with no experience as software developers — to distribute apps based on the same technology.

In recent months, OpenAI has worked to enhance and expand ChatGPT in other ways. In September, it folded its DALL-E image generator into ChatGPT and released a new version of the chatbot that interacts with people using spoken words, much like Apple’s Siri digital assistant.

The company also said on Wednesday that it would offer a version of its chatbot called ChatGPT Team. Available for $25 to $30 per user a month, ChatGPT Team provides a way for businesses and other groups to use the chatbot in a way that will keep their data private. Any information shared through the service will not be used to train its A.I. technologies, OpenAI said.

(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft last month for copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)