OpenAI is moving to acquire Ona, a cloud execution and orchestration company, in a deal aimed at strengthening Codex, its artificial intelligence coding assistant, for longer and more complex development tasks.
In its official announcement, OpenAI said it will acquire Ona and bring the company’s secure cloud execution and orchestration technology into the Codex ecosystem.
The deal reflects OpenAI’s growing focus on developer tools as AI coding assistants move beyond simple code suggestions and toward more sustained software work.
Ona brings cloud-based execution to Codex
Ona’s technology is designed to give AI agents a more persistent place to work.
According to OpenAI, Codex’s most valuable work is increasingly unfolding over hours or days, rather than only minutes.
That matters because many software tasks cannot be completed in one quick session. Debugging a complex issue, running tests, modernizing an application, addressing vulnerabilities, or reviewing a multi-file codebase may require memory, context, and secure access over time.
CNBC said Ona’s technology provides secure and persistent environments where agents can access the tools, systems, and context they need to make progress.
This could make Codex more useful for enterprise customers that want AI agents to work inside controlled environments instead of relying only on a developer’s local machine.
Codex usage grows rapidly
The acquisition also comes as Codex usage expands quickly.
OpenAI said more than 5 million people use Codex every week to research, analyze, build, and automate their work, up 400% from earlier this year.
OpenAI also said Codex began as a tool for software developers but now helps a wider range of people complete complex work from an initial request through to a finished result.
The figures show why OpenAI is investing more heavily in coding tools. AI coding assistants are becoming a major competition area for technology companies, especially as developers use them not only for autocomplete, but also for planning, refactoring, testing, and automation.
Ona says the deal expands its mission
Ona confirmed the agreement in its own announcement.
In a post titled “Ona is joining OpenAI”, Ona co-founder and CEO Johannes Landgraf said the company has entered into an agreement to join OpenAI as part of the Codex team.
Landgraf wrote that weekly Ona agent sessions have grown 13 times in production since the beginning of the year, including use by major institutions such as the oldest bank in the United States, one of Europe’s largest pharmaceutical companies, and one of Asia’s largest sovereign wealth funds.
Ona said its platform was built around the belief that software development should not be trapped on a single laptop. The company said it has applied its experience in cloud development environments to cloud agents through reproducible environments, scoped credentials, audit trails, agent orchestration, and runtime AI security.
Enterprise security becomes central
For OpenAI, the acquisition is not only about making Codex more powerful. It is also about making Codex safer and easier to deploy in enterprise environments.
Ona has helped 2 million developers work in secure, reproducible cloud environments.
The company added that Ona’s customer-controlled execution model will allow agents to operate inside an organization’s own cloud environment while OpenAI provides the intelligence and orchestration behind the experience.
Thibault Sottiaux, OpenAI’s core products lead, said in the announcement that enterprises want powerful agents that can do real work while meeting security and control requirements.
Deal remains subject to closing conditions
The acquisition has not yet closed.
The transaction remains subject to customary closing conditions, including required regulatory approvals. Until closing, OpenAI and Ona will remain separate and independent companies.
After the deal closes, Ona’s team will join OpenAI and work with the Codex team to advance secure, persistent enterprise execution capabilities.
The acquisition shows where OpenAI wants Codex to go next: from an AI coding helper into a more persistent work system that can continue tasks across cloud environments, devices, and production workflows.
For developers and enterprises, the bigger question is whether Codex can become not just a tool that writes code, but an AI collaborator that can safely carry complex software work forward over time.
