This time, OpenAI has drawn attention not by acquiring a product but by bringing on an entire team. The company has integrated the full team of the startup Alex Codes, which helped write code with AI for Apple applications, into its staff.
Daniel Edrisian, the founder of Alex Codes, confirmed the agreement, stating that their team has now joined OpenAI’s Codex division, which focuses on coding.
When the Alex Codes project was launched in 2024, Apple itself did not yet have AI support for coding. However, earlier this year, Apple added such a feature to its own software. As a result, the importance of Alex Codes as an external tool diminished. It remains unclear whether this was the reason behind the team’s move to OpenAI.
It should be noted that existing users will still be able to use the Alex Codes app, but after October 1st, it will no longer be available for download.
OpenAI has taken similar steps before, attracting companies not for their products but for their knowledge and expertise. For example, the company recently acquired another startup, Statsig, for the same purpose at a cost of $1.1 billion.
