OpenAI launches new Codex tools for white collar work

OpenAI is getting serious about courting enterprise users. On Tuesday, the AI ​​Lab released a new set of capabilities for Codex, which aims to expand the proxy tool’s uses in the workplace.

Along with the new tools, the company released an internal report on how Codex is being used in knowledge work, finding that its uses extend beyond software engineering.

“Codex now has more than 5 million weekly active users, an increase of more than 6-fold since the launch of the desktop app in February,” a blog post introducing the report says. “Although developers still represent the largest group of users, knowledge workers now represent about 20 percent of users and are growing more than three times as fast.”

To further attract these users, OpenAI has released a set of six plugins targeting specific functions: data analytics, creative production, sales, product design, equity investing, and investment banking. Available from within the Codex app, each of the new tools combines integrations, help, and context to allow Codex to get closer to a specific task.

Like any AI tool, plugins will become more effective with user customization, but they are meant to be powerful tools out of the box.

The new tools follow a similar push for agent plugins from Anthropic, which launched its Enterprise Agents program in February. (A more specific set of finance-oriented agents launched in May.) With its traditional consumer focus, OpenAI has been slower to court enterprise customers, only introducing plug-in support for Codex in March.

Along with the plugins, OpenAI introduced the new Sites feature, which allows Codex to output its work product as a hosted interactive website, rather than just a local file. As part of this ecosystem, OpenAI is collaborating with Wix, Base44, Replit, Lovable, Figma, and Emergent – ​​though the company plans to develop a larger partner ecosystem to support the service.

The new annotations feature will also allow users to map a specific part of a document or file within Codex, allowing for more context-specific commands and operations.

The new enterprise features come just three weeks after OpenAI launched a new joint venture for enterprise customers, called the OpenAI Deployment Company. The project includes more than $4 billion in funding from global investment firms, with the goal of integrating OpenAI tools more deeply into companies around the world.

“AI is increasingly capable of doing meaningful work within organizations,” Dennis Dresser, chief revenue officer at OpenAI, said in a statement at the launch. “The challenge now is to help companies integrate these systems into the infrastructure and workflows that support their business.”