The drawback is that it’s text-only and only has a 128K context window, and it’s supposed to be used «where latency matters as much as intelligence.»
Continue reading “OpenAI introduces Codex-Spark, greatly improving coding speed”
Tag: openai
Nvidia standardizing on GPT-5.3-Codex internally for ~30k engineers
Codex is now rolling out to all engineers at the company, in close cooperation with the OpenAI team who built in «cloud-managed admin controls» and fail-safe processing.
They even helped onboard the Nvidia team, saying «It’s shocking how quickly they’ve adopted Codex», and that they move like a giant startup.
GPT-5.3-Codex was only launched last week, and is perceived as a possible profit engine, competing with Claude Code for enterprise customers.
New «Chat» model coming this week, Altman says in memo to staff
That would likely be GPT-5.3, debuted last week for Codex. It’s a blazingly fast and more capable successor to 5.2, and is said to be one of the first models used to make itself.
The new Codex model has been a great success, funneling a 60% growth in overall use just last week.
That model is also available to Free and Go users for a limited time, and is now being extended with perhaps reduced limits, Altman says:
— We want everyone to be able to try Codex and start building.
Read the full scoop on CNBC
Ads are now live on Free and Go tiers of ChatGPT in the USA
— Our goal is for ads to support broader access to more powerful ChatGPT features while maintaining the trust people place in ChatGPT for important and personal tasks, they write.
Paid tiers other than Go won’t be seeing any ads at all, and the stated reason for them is to give more queries and responses to the ad-supported tiers, while keeping them fast and responsive.
It’s possible to turn off ads and get limited messages, and under-18s won’t be getting ads. They will also be disabled for «sensitive topics» such as health, mental health and politics.
The test is only for the U.S. market as it stands, and the plan is for ads to make up a little less than half of OpenAIs income once they get off the ground, CNBC reports.
Read more: OpenAI’s announcement. Writeups on Engadget, The Verge, and Gizmodo.
The Super Bowl AI ads worth watching
If you haven’t caught up yet, Anthropic has sworn off ads and are using their Super Bowl to time decry them.
This has caused a very real spat with OpenAI, and Sam Altman posted a long screed about how Anthropic is misrepresenting how ads will work in ChatGPT.
OpenAI releases GPT-5.3-Codex, faster and more capable
GPT-5.3-Codex is here!
*Best coding performance (57% SWE-Bench Pro, 76% TerminalBench 2.0, 64% OSWorld).
*Mid-task steerability and live updates during tasks.
*Faster! Less than half the tokens of 5.2-Codex for same tasks, and >25% faster per token!
*Good computer use.— Sam Altman (@sama) February 5, 2026
The new coding model is 25% faster — letting it do long-running tasks in a shorter time frame.
It’s the first OpenAI model that was built with itself. They used early versions of it to debug, manage deployment and diagnose test results, and say they were impressed with its capabilities.
Continue reading “OpenAI releases GPT-5.3-Codex, faster and more capable”
OpenAI hires Head of Preparedness after very public job listing
The job post almost instantly went viral in December, with CEO Sam Altman warning of biological and hacking risks — saying things were moving so fast they urgently needed someone for the «stressful job,» to be ready to «jump into the deep end pretty much immediately.»
On the hiring, Altman says he has found the best candidate for the job, and is «extremely excited» to welcome Scandinaro, who says there are great benefits ahead, but also warns of «irrecoverable harm» if not handled correctly.
— Things are about to move quite fast and we will be working with extremely powerful models soon. This will require commensurate safeguards to ensure we can continue to deliver tremendous benefits, Altman writes.
Forbes profiles Sam Altman, with a tease of Artificial General Intelligence
What is for certain is that AI is getting more capable with every new model, and Altman says:
— We are heading toward a system that will be capable of doing innovation on its own, I don’t think most of the world has internalized what that’s going to mean.
On AGI, he says they would need «a lot of medium-sized breakthroughs. I don’t think we need a big one.»
Go read the full profile on Forbes, that takes you through Altman’s early career, with OpenAI as «destiny,» what he thinks about hardware — and how he plans to exit one day.
OpenAI’s Codex suite gets a macOS app
Introducing the Codex app—a powerful command center for building with agents.
Now available on macOS.https://t.co/HW05s2C9Nr
— OpenAI (@OpenAI) February 2, 2026
For your discerning coding needs, you are no longer tied to the Codex web interface or terminal window, and can now vibe code on your own macOS app. Windows support is «comining soon.”
The app supports multitasking agents, creating and using skills, and automations.
Read more about it and get the app here.
To celebrate the launch, Codex is now available for Free and Go tiers, and paid plans get double the usage limits for «a limited time.»
OpenAI to retire whole host of legacy models in ChatGPT, including 4o
The reason for bringing them back was how clinical and cerebral, and less friendly GPT-5 had gotten, leading to a very public backlash.
After this, OpenAI spent a lot of time thinking about personality and customization — leading to GPT-5.2, which now has the overwhelming majority of users.
The previously very popular 4o model is now only used by 0.1% of users.
In their announcement today, OpenAI also says they are making progress towards a more creative version of GPT for adults, having rolled out age prediction earlier this month.
Read more: OpenAI’s announcement, discussion on r/ChatGPT.
OpenAI closing in on $100 billion funding round at $830B valuation
SoftBank and Nvidia will be the largest investors, clocking in at $30 billion each, while Amazon will pitch in «potentially» $20 billion and Microsoft will contribute «less than» $10 billion, according to Reuters and The Information.
Apparently, Amazon’s investment could come with a caveat that OpenAI expands its cloud server rental with the company, which will likely not be a large hitch.
This will also be SoftBank’s second investment in OpenAI, after recently completing a $41 billion investment, and selling out Nvidia.
That would bring their holdings to $71 billion, which is still short of Microsoft’s reported stake of $135 billion.
Read more: Reuters, and The Information, summarized by Reuters.
OpenAI launches Prism, a research and collaboration tool for scientists
That’s where OpenAI’s new service comes in — as a LaTeX-native interface, it combines the paper writing in the same space as it does equations, references and «surrounding context.»
Of course there is a GPT-5.2 engine right there, so it’s easy to cross-reference and check for originality, find citations and proofread — and it’s a fairly nice research assistant, to boot.
Prism is available as of now for anyone who has a personal account with OpenAI.
Read more: OpenAI’s launch page, launch tweet, The tool itself, writeup on Gizmodo.
OpenAI says ChatGPT increasingly used in hard science
The scales are still low — with 1.3 million users discussing «advanced hard science,» and an average of 8.3 million weekly messages on the topics.
To put this into perspective, an October, 2025, survey from OpenAI said that 0.15% of ChatGPT users engaged in conversations on self-harm and suicide, or roughly 1.2 million customers.
Continue reading “OpenAI says ChatGPT increasingly used in hard science”
OpenAI goes deeper into government with Leidos contractor partnership
They are now partnering with the giant government contractor/consultancy Leidos, according to a release, to «integrate Open AI-powered generative and agentic AI into the core workflows of customers in strategic markets.»
This starts by deploying OpenAI’s technology internally for the company, and then by «harnessing the transformative power of AI to help improve how federal agencies operate.»
OpenAI says they want to move «beyond experimentation and into real-world deployment that improves efficiency, resilience and public service.»
Read more: Leidos press release, Gizmodo.
Court filings: Microsoft has 27% stake in OpenAI worth ~$135 billion
From the papers, it seems Microsoft was ready with a whole new AI subsidiary to form after Sam Altman’s ouster as CEO in November 2023 — complete with a legal framework, ready to send to the Washington Secretary of State at a moments notice.
They had already budgeted for about $25 billion in costs to «absorb the OpenAI team.»
When Altman returned to OpenAI after a short while, he was already discussing possible board members with Microsoft.
The winner of the early story seems to be Microsoft, retaining leverage over «Major Decisions» up until the for profit reorganization of OpenAI.
Microsoft also retains the rights to OpenAI’s technology until 2032. Musk is suing for breach of contract/trust and is demanding $134 billion from OpenAI.
Read the full scoop at GeekWire.