OpenAI has announced plans to acquire Ona, a startup specializing in AI agents and the persistent infrastructure required for long-running tasks. The acquisition, if approved, will embed Ona's team and technology into OpenAI's Codex unit, signaling a strategic pivot from generative AI toward agentic AI that can execute multi-day workflows.
The Deal: Persistent Environments for Agentic AI
According to TechRadar, Ona builds secure cloud environments where AI agents can access enterprise tools and systems, retain context, and continue executing even after a user closes their laptop or browser. OpenAI stated: "[Ona's] technology provides secure, persistent environments where agents can access the tools, systems, and context they need to make progress over time." The deal would effectively give OpenAI's Codex access to the infrastructure layer that allows agents to keep working for much longer periods—potentially days.
Ona CEO Johannes Landgraf confirmed the plans, saying: "After close, we are excited to join the Codex team and keep building toward a future where AI accelerates the economy and helps every team and every organization work more safely, more quickly, and more collaboratively." He referenced the regulatory approval needed to proceed.
Growth Metrics: Codex and Ona Show Rocketing Adoption
TechRadar reported that Codex is evolving from a coding assistant into a broader tool for multiple worker types. Codex now has five million weekly users. Ona also noted a 13x increase in weekly sessions since the beginning of the year, signaling major appetite for agentic AI technology. Both companies have seen major rises in agentic AI users this year.
| Metric | Codex | Ona |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly users / sessions | 5 million weekly users | 13x increase in weekly sessions (since start of year) |
| Core function | Coding assistant expanding to broader worker types | Secure cloud environments for persistent AI agents |
| Key capability | Long-running AI tasks via persistent infrastructure | Agent access to enterprise tools, retained context |
Implications for Enterprise Automation
For enterprise technology buyers, the acquisition underscores the shift from generative AI—which produces text or code in a single session—to agentic AI, where autonomous agents carry out complex, multi-step business processes. Ona's infrastructure enables agents to maintain state across sessions, a critical requirement for tasks such as supply chain optimization, continuous compliance monitoring, and long-duration data processing. While the source focuses on Codex's evolution as a coding assistant, the underlying persistent infrastructure could be applied to any enterprise domain requiring ongoing agentic workflows.
TechRadar noted that after "years of developing high-performance frontier models," OpenAI is now expanding investments to give agents "the right tools, memory and environments," marking a major shift from generative AI to agentic AI. For organizations exploring AI agents, this deal suggests that future enterprise AI platforms will need robust infrastructure for long-running, context-aware tasks.
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