OpenAI to acquire Ona

OpenAI announced its intention to acquire Ona, a company specializing in secure cloud execution and orchestration technology. This move significantly expands the capabilities of OpenAI's Codex ecosystem.

Codex, used by over 5 million people weekly, is evolving beyond short tasks. OpenAI sees increasing value in agents performing complex work over hours or days, requiring persistent operational environments.

Ona's technology provides these secure, persistent environments, allowing AI agents to access necessary tools and context over extended periods. This is crucial for enabling agents to continue work even when users are offline.

Giving Codex a persistent place to work

Ona has a proven track record in helping developers migrate software development to the cloud, managing over 2 million developers in secure environments. This expertise directly supports Codex's next phase of development.

The integration will allow Codex agents to operate within a customer's cloud infrastructure, even when local machines are inactive. This addresses a key challenge for deploying AI agents in real-world production scenarios.

Scaling Codex across production workflows

As organizations move from experimentation to production deployment of AI agents, robust infrastructure is paramount. Ona's technology offers organizations control over agent operations, including data security, governance, and access management.

This customer-controlled execution model ensures agents run within an organization's own cloud environment while still leveraging OpenAI's intelligence. It provides enhanced control over infrastructure and data boundaries without limiting Codex's capabilities.

"Agents need more than intelligence; they need a trusted workspace," said Johannes Landgraf, Co-Founder and CEO of Ona. "Joining OpenAI lets us bring that foundation into Codex, helping organizations deploy agents with confidence."

Thibault Sottiaux, Core Products Lead at OpenAI, added, "Ona will help us make Codex easier to deploy securely across production workflows for customers operating at the highest standards of trust and scale."

The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals. Post-closing, the Ona team will join OpenAI to advance secure, persistent enterprise execution capabilities for Codex.