Report of Nikita Bier joining OpenAI’s Codex team remains unverified

Feb 18, 2026 · 10 min readUpdated Aug 1, 2026 Comments TL;DR: Today, we’re releasing a new episode of our podcast AI & I, where Dan Shipper sits down with two members of the team building OpenAI’s coding agent, Codex, Thibault Sottiaux, head of Codex,and Andrew Ambrosino, member of technical staff on the Codex app. Watch on X or YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up to get it in your inbox. A little after 4 p.m. PT on Super Bowl Sunday, a wave of people took their eyes off the game to download a coding agent. It wasn’t the wings, the beer, or Bad Bunny that inspired them. It was one of the many AI ads that aired—specifically, OpenAI’s plug for its coding agent, Codex. [...] Thibault Sottiaux, head of Codex, and Andrew Ambrosino, a member of technical staff on the Codex app, say their systems came under heavy load almost immediately after the spot aired. Even better, a lot of people also reached out to tell them that the ad in

Andrew Ambrosino, product and engineering lead for OpenAI's Codex desktop application, argues that the fundamental economics of building software have inverted. In a wide-ranging conversation on Lenny's Podcast, he laid out a thesis that implementation — writing code, standing up prototypes, shipping features — has become abundant and nearly free, while taste, curation, and the judgment to decide what to build have become the binding constraints. Codex has grown sixfold since January 2026 to over 5 million weekly active users, with 90% of OpenAI's own workforce using it, even though it was originally built as a developer tool actively hostile to non-engineers. Ambrosino describes a team structure he calls "zone defense," where designers write code, product managers own infrastructure, and [...] Ambrosino leads product and engineering for Codex, OpenAI's desktop application that has grown sixfold since January 2026 and now counts more than 5 million weekly active users. He is not merely

(00:00) Introduction to Andrew Ambrosino (02:30) How AI is changing the shape of product work (06:32) When to use documents vs. prototypes (10:25) What “taste” actually means (12:06) Why AI is still bad at design (16:18) Is the design process really dead? (21:35) What the design process looks like on the Codex team (23:41) Are product functions disappearing? (27:22) Team structure (30:12) IC vs. management (31:37) Planning roadmaps (35:16) Building features that don’t work yet (38:13) The ambition problem: when you’re too AGI-pilled (39:17) The latest frontier: loops and autonomous development (52:05) How Andrew uses Codex to automate his entire job (46:52) The power of computer use and browser automation (49:10) Will we run all our SaaS apps inside Codex? (52:05) The future vision for [...] Andrew Ambrosino leads development of the Codex desktop app at OpenAI. Nearly 100% of OpenAI employees—not just engineers—now use Codex weekly. A lifelong builder with a background spanning enginee

Andrew Ambrosino leads the team behind the Codex desktop app at OpenAI. Codex usage has grown 6x since February, reaching over 5M weekly active users, and nearly 100% of OpenAI's employees use the Codex app regularly (and that's not just the engineers). Andrew's personal mission is to build "the best desktop app that has ever existed, full stop." If you've used the Codex app lately, you know he's not far off from that goal. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 🔸 The "zone defense" model for how PMs at OpenAI actually operate 🔸 Why AI is so bad at design 🔸 What “taste” really means as a professional skill 🔸 Why Andrew thinks the Codex app would have flopped if they'd shipped it in November instead of February (same product—only the model changed) [...] Andrew Ambrosino leads the team behind the Codex desktop app at OpenAI. Codex usage has grown 6x since February, reaching over 5M weekly active users, and nearly 100% of OpenAI's employees use the Codex app regularly (and that's

a developer tool, right? That Yeah. and it wasn't going to be an IDE. It was going to be this right-sized surface where it was like sort of a chatbot, but it was more than that and you could see the code, but we weren't going to let you edit the code. There's a really interesting thing that happened at OpenAI in January in February, and it was before we actually released the Codex app, which is that we'd started to dog food the Codex app. And what we were finding like we were converging on some pretty clear internal PMF on engineering right and research workflows. They were thrilled. They were loving it. We were like all right we just got to get the quality bar up before we release it to the world. We're convinced that this will be a thing. But then at the company we spun up a few other [...] # Why OpenAI is merging Codex and ChatGPT and the future of knowledge work | Andrew Ambrosino ## Lenny's Podcast 621000 subscribers 1032 likes ### Description 52378 views Posted: 28 Jun 2026 Andr

Log inSign up ## Post user avatar Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan [...] as a professional skill 🔸 How Andrew uses Codex to run his workflows 🔸 His vision for Codex + ChatGPT Listen now 👇 youtu.be/P3KDebPTUrw [...] Andrew Ambrosino (@ajambrosino) leads the team behind the Codex desktop app at @OpenAI. Codex usage has 6x'd since February, reaching over 5M weekly active users, and nearly 100% of OpenAI's employees use the Codex app regularly (and not just the engineers). Andrew's personal mission is to build "the best desktop app that has ever existed, full stop." If you've used the Codex app lately, you know he's not far off from that goal. In our in-depth conversation, we discuss: 🔸 The "zone defense" model of how PMs at OpenAI operate 🔸 Why AI is so bad at design 🔸 Why Andrew thinks the Codex app would have flopped if they'd shipped it in November instead of February (same product—only the model changed) 🔸 What “taste” really means as a professional skill 🔸 How Andrew uses C