tech
OpenAI says 98% of its employees now use Codex agents, but all the data is self-reported
OpenAI says 98% of employees now use Codex agents and non-dev usage grew 137x, but all metrics are self-reported by the company that sells the product.
TL;DR
- Nearly 98% of OpenAI employees use the AI coding agent Codex, up from roughly 40% in August 2025.
- Active Codex users grew fivefold in the first half of 2026, with requests for long tasks increasing tenfold.
- Non-developer usage of Codex increased dramatically, with individual usage growing 137 times since August 2025.
- OpenAI frames its internal adoption patterns as a preview of broader enterprise AI adoption trends.
- The paper relies entirely on self-reported data from OpenAI, which has a financial incentive to promote Codex.
- Independent third-party verification of the usage figures is absent.
- The paper does not provide data on whether the shift to agents has improved output quality or reduced total completion time.
- The competitive landscape sees AI companies racing to prove the value of agents over chatbots.
- Meta's internal tracking of token consumption offers a parallel example of measuring input volume rather than output value.