- OpenAI confirms plans to acquire Ona and its agent AI infrastructure
- Codex could benefit from Ona infrastructure, which provides environments for long-running tasks
- Both companies have seen significant increases in agent AI users this year, marking a major shift.
OpenAI has announced plans to acquire Ona, a startup that focuses on AI agents and their required environments, which could see the company absorbed into OpenAI’s Codex team.
Under the proposed deal, OpenAI would gain even more experience to help AI agents work on long-running tasks that could last even days.
This comes as more organizations perform agency work for extended periods, hence the demand for more persistent infrastructure.
OpenAI announces plans to acquire Ona
“[Ona’s] “The technology provides secure, persistent environments where agents can access the tools, systems, and context they need to thrive over time,” OpenAI said in an announcement.
Ona creates secure cloud environments where AI agents can access enterprise tools and systems, retain context, and continue executing even once a user closes their laptop or browser. The deal would effectively give OpenAI’s Codex access to the infrastructure layer that allows agents to continue working for much, much longer.
The ChatGPT creator also noted that Codex is evolving from a coding assistant to a much broader tool that helps more types of workers: it now has five million weekly users. Ona also saw a 13x increase in weekly sessions since the beginning of the year, indicating a strong appetite for the technology.
After years of developing high-performance frontier models, OpenAI appears to finally be at the stage where it is now scaling up investments to provide agents with the right tools, memory, and environments, signaling a major shift from generative AI to agent AI.
“Following the closure, we are excited to join the Codex team and continue building towards a future where AI accelerates the economy and helps every team and every organization work safer, faster and more collaboratively,” said CEO Johannes Landgraf, referencing the regulatory approval needed to continue.
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