Codex's rise: 40M+ weekly users in under a year, now OpenAI's core product line
danshipper · x · 2026-10-16
Dan Shipper tells the definitive history of Codex: a year ago it was a struggling side project without PMF at OpenAI. Within 12 months it absorbed the ChatGPT desktop app, hit 40M+ weekly users across Codex and ChatGPT for Work, and its leader Thibault Sottiaux now runs all of OpenAI's core products. Key move: training a dedicated model line separate from ChatGPT.
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