Inside OpenAI’s Decision to Combine Codex and ChatGPT

Early last year, after Anthropic released a preview of its coding tool, Claude Code, OpenAI realized it had allowed the then-smaller AI rival to surpass it in coding. Around that time, OpenAI threw resources behind a new dedicated team that would focus specifically on developing AI tools for coding.

Nearly 18 months later, OpenAI leaders—including Thibault Sottiaux, who oversaw the new team—came to a stark realization: The company’s Codex coding tool works better for many tasks than its flagship AI service, ChatGPT. For instance, Codex is better than ChatGPT at completing long-running, multistep tasks and at using external tools and writing code to complete tasks such as editing complicated spreadsheets, Sottiaux said in an interview.