OpenAI is making Codex more useful in Chrome and the cloud

By integrating Ona's technology, OpenAI aims to enable Codex to operate persistently in the cloud for days, entirely unbound by active user sessions.

OpenAI's Codex now has more than 5 million users, up nearly 4x from earlier this year. To further accelerate Codex's growth among developers, OpenAI today announced that it has agreed to acquire Ona, a company that builds secure cloud execution and orchestration technology for developers. Ona will enable developers to run Codex with persistent and controlled cloud infrastructure for long-running agentic workflows.

Right now, most Codex execution happens locally on developers' laptops and PCs, and the agents work continuously for hours. Through Ona, OpenAI aims to make Codex agents keep working for days without being tied to a user’s local machine or an active session. This will be an important capability for enterprises that want to deploy AI agents in production while maintaining control over infrastructure, data, security boundaries, credential scope, logging, and review workflows.

Like any acquisition, the deal is still subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. Until the deal closes, OpenAI and Ona will continue to operate as separate companies. After closing, Ona’s team will join the Codex team to improve developer workflows.

Alongside the Ona acquisition announcement, OpenAI today introduced a few Codex updates. Developers can now save Codex rate limit resets and use them later instead of losing them when they are not needed immediately. OpenAI is also adding a referral option where users can invite a friend to Codex and get a saved rate limit reset.

Introducing developer mode for browser use in Chrome and the Codex in-app browser.

Codex can use the Chrome DevTools Protocol (CDP) to debug browser issues by profiling JavaScript performance and inspecting console output, network traffic, and page state. pic.twitter.com/JTFjgCHmgI
— OpenAI Developers (@OpenAIDevs) June 12, 2026

OpenAI today also announced a developer mode for browser use in Chrome and the Codex in-app browser. With this mode, Codex can use the Chrome DevTools Protocol to debug web apps, inspect pages, and work more directly with browser-based development workflows. Developers can use this when they want Codex to profile JavaScript, inspect console output and network traffic, examine web page states including the DOM and applied styles, and more.