{ "apiVersion": "v1", "person": { "id": "thibault-sottiaux", "name": "Thibault Sottiaux", "role": "Head of Codex", "level": "leader", "levelMeaning": "A VP, director, head or manager at the organization.", "organization": "OpenAI", "organizationId": "openai", "passages": 11, "reported": 0, "url": "https://the-ai-record.com/people/thibault-sottiaux", "json": "https://the-ai-record.com/api/v1/people/thibault-sottiaux.json", "background": "Named in The Pragmatic Engineer article 'How Codex is built' as Tibo, head of Codex at OpenAI.", "whyCredible": "Leads the team that builds the product he describes, so he speaks from inside it; OpenAI sells Codex.", "linkedin": null, "x": null, "profileSource": "https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-codex-is-built" }, "passages": [ { "id": "openai-asked-questions-why-codex-runs-certain-2026", "text": "When we asked questions related to why Codex runs in a certain way, Codex decided to debug its own systems. It connected to logs, SSH'd into research dev boxes, and analyzed ML instabilities.", "context": null, "speaker": "Thibault Sottiaux", "speakerId": "thibault-sottiaux", "speakerUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/people/thibault-sottiaux", "speakerLevel": "leader", "role": "Head of Codex", "voice": "person", "organization": "OpenAI", "organizationId": "openai", "organizationUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/organizations/openai", "aiVendor": true, "work": { "title": "How Codex is built", "type": "press", "date": "2026-02-17", "publisher": "The Pragmatic Engineer", "locator": "3. How Codex builds itself, Using Codex to debug Codex", "url": "https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-codex-is-built" }, "grade": "C", "gradeMeaning": "An interview or press quote.", "verification": { "status": "verified", "meaning": "An independent second reader re-fetched the source and confirmed the wording.", "reviewedOn": "2026-11-04" }, "topics": [ "bugs-and-incidents", "coding-agents" ], "functions": [ "engineering" ], "figures": [], "url": "https://the-ai-record.com/passages/openai-asked-questions-why-codex-runs-certain-2026", "json": "https://the-ai-record.com/api/v1/passages/openai-asked-questions-why-codex-runs-certain-2026.json" }, { "id": "openai-codex-really-built-multitasking-understanding-most-2026", "text": "Codex is really built for multitasking. There's this understanding that most tasks will just get done to completion. People on our team have figured out what Codex is and isn't capable of. There is a tricky thing in all of this, though: we have to relearn these capabilities with every model", "context": null, "speaker": "Thibault Sottiaux", "speakerId": "thibault-sottiaux", "speakerUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/people/thibault-sottiaux", "speakerLevel": "leader", "role": "Head of Codex", "voice": "person", "organization": "OpenAI", "organizationId": "openai", "organizationUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/organizations/openai", "aiVendor": true, "work": { "title": "How Codex is built", "type": "press", "date": "2026-02-17", "publisher": "The Pragmatic Engineer", "locator": "3. How Codex builds itself", "url": "https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-codex-is-built" }, "grade": "C", "gradeMeaning": "An interview or press quote.", "verification": { "status": "verified", "meaning": "An independent second reader re-fetched the source and confirmed the wording.", "reviewedOn": "2026-11-04" }, "topics": [ "coding-agents", "developer-productivity" ], "functions": [ "engineering" ], "figures": [], "url": "https://the-ai-record.com/passages/openai-codex-really-built-multitasking-understanding-most-2026", "json": "https://the-ai-record.com/api/v1/passages/openai-codex-really-built-multitasking-understanding-most-2026.json" }, { "id": "openai-we-take-stance-sandboxing-hurts-us-2026", "text": "We take a stance with the sandboxing that hurts us in terms of general adoption. However, we do not want to promote something that could be unsafe by default. As a dev, you can always go into your configuration and disable these settings if you want.", "context": null, "speaker": "Thibault Sottiaux", "speakerId": "thibault-sottiaux", "speakerUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/people/thibault-sottiaux", "speakerLevel": "leader", "role": "Head of Codex", "voice": "person", "organization": "OpenAI", "organizationId": "openai", "organizationUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/organizations/openai", "aiVendor": true, "work": { "title": "How Codex is built", "type": "press", "date": "2026-02-17", "publisher": "The Pragmatic Engineer", "locator": "2. Technology and architecture choices", "url": "https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-codex-is-built" }, "grade": "C", "gradeMeaning": "An interview or press quote.", "verification": { "status": "verified", "meaning": "An independent second reader re-fetched the source and confirmed the wording.", "reviewedOn": "2026-11-04" }, "topics": [ "autonomy-and-oversight", "where-agents-run", "agent-permissions" ], "functions": [ "engineering" ], "figures": [], "url": "https://the-ai-record.com/passages/openai-we-take-stance-sandboxing-hurts-us-2026", "json": "https://the-ai-record.com/api/v1/passages/openai-we-take-stance-sandboxing-hurts-us-2026.json" }, { "id": "openai-hiring-typing-fast-down-taste-up-2026", "text": "Yeah, I would say like, … skill that is trending … is typing fast. That is not that useful … Skills that are trending up is, you know, just great taste. Thinking about the user connecting to the audience that you're building for. A lot of ex-founders are incredibly successful right now, or like, you know, just like repeat founders. We're also finding this, like when we're hiring at OpenAI, like, you know, we have a lot of founders. I think we have more than 120 … founders currently at OpenAI. So it's like this mega startup.", "context": "Asked which skills are trending up and down in what OpenAI looks for when hiring, Sottiaux answers.", "speaker": "Thibault Sottiaux", "speakerId": "thibault-sottiaux", "speakerUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/people/thibault-sottiaux", "speakerLevel": "leader", "role": "Head of ChatGPT and Codex, OpenAI", "voice": "person", "organization": "OpenAI", "organizationId": "openai", "organizationUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/organizations/openai", "aiVendor": true, "work": { "title": "OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT: We're entering a new era of AI (again)", "type": "podcast", "date": "2026-10-04", "publisher": "Lenny's Podcast (YouTube)", "locator": "23:45", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM-C3JqCXBk" }, "grade": "C", "gradeMeaning": "An interview or press quote.", "verification": { "status": "reported", "meaning": "Not yet confirmed against the source by an independent second reader." }, "topics": [ "headcount-and-hiring", "training-and-skills" ], "functions": [ "people" ], "figures": [ { "metric": "founders-on-staff", "value": 120, "unit": "people", "period": "October 2026, as spoken", "definition": "lower bound ('more than 120') on founders currently at OpenAI, as the speaker counts them; the word before 'founders' is cut because the passes disagreed", "level": "n/a" } ], "url": "https://the-ai-record.com/passages/openai-hiring-typing-fast-down-taste-up-2026", "json": "https://the-ai-record.com/api/v1/passages/openai-hiring-typing-fast-down-taste-up-2026.json" }, { "id": "openai-codex-writes-analysis-code-for-me-2026", "text": "Yeah, yeah, yeah, merging some code every once in a while. Technically, like a lot of code is getting written for me to do all sorts of kinds of like analysis, like, you know, understand like trends, understand the business, understand the next feature, you know, how well our previous launches are doing. A lot of code is written by Codex for that. You know, I'm obviously not writing it by hand anymore.", "context": "Asked whether he still codes or ships pull requests, Sottiaux describes how much of his analysis work is now done by code that Codex writes.", "speaker": "Thibault Sottiaux", "speakerId": "thibault-sottiaux", "speakerUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/people/thibault-sottiaux", "speakerLevel": "leader", "role": "Head of ChatGPT and Codex, OpenAI", "voice": "person", "organization": "OpenAI", "organizationId": "openai", "organizationUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/organizations/openai", "aiVendor": true, "work": { "title": "OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT: We're entering a new era of AI (again)", "type": "podcast", "date": "2026-10-04", "publisher": "Lenny's Podcast (YouTube)", "locator": "01:56", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM-C3JqCXBk" }, "grade": "C", "gradeMeaning": "An interview or press quote.", "verification": { "status": "reported", "meaning": "Not yet confirmed against the source by an independent second reader." }, "topics": [ "engineer-role", "internal-tools" ], "functions": [ "engineering", "product" ], "figures": [], "url": "https://the-ai-record.com/passages/openai-codex-writes-analysis-code-for-me-2026", "json": "https://the-ai-record.com/api/v1/passages/openai-codex-writes-analysis-code-for-me-2026.json" }, { "id": "openai-compute-on-secondary-monitoring-safety-stack-2026", "text": "We are spending more and more compute on sort of like secondary monitoring. So you have, you know, you have all of the compute that is going into the primary system, you know, the agent that is like doing work. And then you have all of the compute that is going into monitoring, you know, the primary agent to make sure that it's like not taking too high risk of actions … If anything looks like, you know, maybe it's getting prompt injected and just like, you know, intervening with that. And the majority of our investment on the API stack is like, you know, actually going into the safety stack.", "context": "Asked how he thinks about the risks of AI, Sottiaux describes how OpenAI spends compute on monitoring its agents.", "speaker": "Thibault Sottiaux", "speakerId": "thibault-sottiaux", "speakerUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/people/thibault-sottiaux", "speakerLevel": "leader", "role": "Head of ChatGPT and Codex, OpenAI", "voice": "person", "organization": "OpenAI", "organizationId": "openai", "organizationUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/organizations/openai", "aiVendor": true, "work": { "title": "OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT: We're entering a new era of AI (again)", "type": "podcast", "date": "2026-10-04", "publisher": "Lenny's Podcast (YouTube)", "locator": "34:37", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM-C3JqCXBk" }, "grade": "C", "gradeMeaning": "An interview or press quote.", "verification": { "status": "reported", "meaning": "Not yet confirmed against the source by an independent second reader." }, "topics": [ "security", "autonomy-and-oversight" ], "functions": [ "security", "engineering" ], "figures": [], "url": "https://the-ai-record.com/passages/openai-compute-on-secondary-monitoring-safety-stack-2026", "json": "https://the-ai-record.com/api/v1/passages/openai-compute-on-secondary-monitoring-safety-stack-2026.json" }, { "id": "openai-decisions-api-bottoms-up-weekend-hack-2026", "text": "I don't know if that's surprising, but it is, you know, as I said, a lot of ex-founders doing a lot of bottoms up, you know, very exciting ideas. You know, for example, decisions API, you know, came together very quickly. We realized like we have a really good model with Luna. We can just do some, you know, constraint sampling and then, you know, have it, you know, shipped as like a different shape to the Responses API. And then, you know, when we do that, you know, it's like, it's faster and it's quite delightful for some cases. And it's just, if you were to like, … the hood, you realize like, okay, there's this … channel that came together. You know, initially, it was like four people kind of hacking on it on the weekend.", "context": "Asked what would surprise people about working inside OpenAI, Sottiaux describes how one API feature came together.", "speaker": "Thibault Sottiaux", "speakerId": "thibault-sottiaux", "speakerUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/people/thibault-sottiaux", "speakerLevel": "leader", "role": "Head of ChatGPT and Codex, OpenAI", "voice": "person", "organization": "OpenAI", "organizationId": "openai", "organizationUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/organizations/openai", "aiVendor": true, "work": { "title": "OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT: We're entering a new era of AI (again)", "type": "podcast", "date": "2026-10-04", "publisher": "Lenny's Podcast (YouTube)", "locator": "27:34", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM-C3JqCXBk" }, "grade": "C", "gradeMeaning": "An interview or press quote.", "verification": { "status": "reported", "meaning": "Not yet confirmed against the source by an independent second reader." }, "topics": [ "team-structure", "product-and-design" ], "functions": [ "engineering", "product" ], "figures": [], "url": "https://the-ai-record.com/passages/openai-decisions-api-bottoms-up-weekend-hack-2026", "json": "https://the-ai-record.com/api/v1/passages/openai-decisions-api-bottoms-up-weekend-hack-2026.json" }, { "id": "openai-dot-warned-production-down-before-demo-2026", "text": "…me five minutes before the live demo, which was actually … stressful because it was like, … production is down. And it's like, oh, well, you know, it's like, … want me to try and fix it? And I'm like, I don't think you're there yet, you know, a little dot, but, you know, thank you for trying. And then, you know, then, you know, I got in touch with like the engineering teams and we started to look, you know, what was going on. And, you know, they, it's like fixed by now. But having this thing that just understands like, okay, there's a pretty important thing happening. It's called Dev Day. There's like this production system, there's a live demo. It's probably using this production system. So these two things are connected and this is happening in five minutes. So I should ping him because like, he probably wants to know about it. I think that's quite remarkable.", "context": "Asked for a recent AI use case that impressed him, Sottiaux describes his personal Dots agent warning him of a production outage shortly before the OpenAI DevDay live demo.", "speaker": "Thibault Sottiaux", "speakerId": "thibault-sottiaux", "speakerUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/people/thibault-sottiaux", "speakerLevel": "leader", "role": "Head of ChatGPT and Codex, OpenAI", "voice": "person", "organization": "OpenAI", "organizationId": "openai", "organizationUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/organizations/openai", "aiVendor": true, "work": { "title": "OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT: We're entering a new era of AI (again)", "type": "podcast", "date": "2026-10-04", "publisher": "Lenny's Podcast (YouTube)", "locator": "20:49", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM-C3JqCXBk" }, "grade": "C", "gradeMeaning": "An interview or press quote.", "verification": { "status": "reported", "meaning": "Not yet confirmed against the source by an independent second reader." }, "topics": [ "bugs-and-incidents", "autonomy-and-oversight" ], "functions": [ "engineering" ], "figures": [], "url": "https://the-ai-record.com/passages/openai-dot-warned-production-down-before-demo-2026", "json": "https://the-ai-record.com/api/v1/passages/openai-dot-warned-production-down-before-demo-2026.json" }, { "id": "openai-dots-agent-learns-no-loops-to-configure-2026", "text": "I think like having to set up and fiddle with your loops and, you know, figuring that out is something that, you know, maybe people got excited about, but I don't think this is the way that it's going to work. I think the way that it's going to work is how we're positioning and what we're shipping with dots, where you have an incredibly smart agent that works 24/7, understands your goals, understands your preferences, learns from feedback. And it's like, … not perfect. I will learn very much from making this available to our pro users. But over time, you just want … system that learns from what you want to achieve.", "context": "Asked about the shift from hand-built agent loops and graphs, Sottiaux describes the approach OpenAI took with its Dots personal agent.", "speaker": "Thibault Sottiaux", "speakerId": "thibault-sottiaux", "speakerUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/people/thibault-sottiaux", "speakerLevel": "leader", "role": "Head of ChatGPT and Codex, OpenAI", "voice": "person", "organization": "OpenAI", "organizationId": "openai", "organizationUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/organizations/openai", "aiVendor": true, "work": { "title": "OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT: We're entering a new era of AI (again)", "type": "podcast", "date": "2026-10-04", "publisher": "Lenny's Podcast (YouTube)", "locator": "03:19", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM-C3JqCXBk" }, "grade": "C", "gradeMeaning": "An interview or press quote.", "verification": { "status": "reported", "meaning": "Not yet confirmed against the source by an independent second reader." }, "topics": [ "context-for-agents" ], "functions": [ "product" ], "figures": [], "url": "https://the-ai-record.com/passages/openai-dots-agent-learns-no-loops-to-configure-2026", "json": "https://the-ai-record.com/api/v1/passages/openai-dots-agent-learns-no-loops-to-configure-2026.json" }, { "id": "openai-dots-built-on-research-memory-codex-harness-2026", "text": "But, you know, seriously, like … research, long persistent, long horizon tasks, this is something that we've worked on, you know, for more than two years. … And it's like, you know, it's just memory works very, very well in … and so we've put a lot of research in that. And, you know, all of this coming together on top of like the Codex harness and also the ability to just like run 24/7 with, you know, good productivity. That's what we launched with dots. And so it's the work of like many, many months.", "context": "Asked why Dots took so long to ship, Sottiaux describes the research OpenAI built it on.", "speaker": "Thibault Sottiaux", "speakerId": "thibault-sottiaux", "speakerUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/people/thibault-sottiaux", "speakerLevel": "leader", "role": "Head of ChatGPT and Codex, OpenAI", "voice": "person", "organization": "OpenAI", "organizationId": "openai", "organizationUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/organizations/openai", "aiVendor": true, "work": { "title": "OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT: We're entering a new era of AI (again)", "type": "podcast", "date": "2026-10-04", "publisher": "Lenny's Podcast (YouTube)", "locator": "15:14", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM-C3JqCXBk" }, "grade": "C", "gradeMeaning": "An interview or press quote.", "verification": { "status": "reported", "meaning": "Not yet confirmed against the source by an independent second reader." }, "topics": [ "context-for-agents" ], "functions": [ "product", "engineering" ], "figures": [], "url": "https://the-ai-record.com/passages/openai-dots-built-on-research-memory-codex-harness-2026", "json": "https://the-ai-record.com/api/v1/passages/openai-dots-built-on-research-memory-codex-harness-2026.json" }, { "id": "openai-dots-production-guardrails-own-hardware-2026", "text": "It has access to some production systems with guardrails, you know? So we built, we talked about specialist dots, but specialist dots is just like, operate with additional guardrails, additional monitoring, and then, you know, on their own hardware. So we actually run some on … The fundamental difference in the way that we've built dots is like, the harness does not run on the machine, you know? And then this is like, maybe people have not realized. It's like, it can connect to as many devices as you want. So it has its own computer. You can actually connect it to your own laptop as well. Over time, you might connect it to like, 10 different devices and it can control it all, a little bit like an octopus.", "context": "Asked whether his Dots agent has access to OpenAI's production code, Sottiaux describes the guardrails and where specialist Dots run.", "speaker": "Thibault Sottiaux", "speakerId": "thibault-sottiaux", "speakerUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/people/thibault-sottiaux", "speakerLevel": "leader", "role": "Head of ChatGPT and Codex, OpenAI", "voice": "person", "organization": "OpenAI", "organizationId": "openai", "organizationUrl": "https://the-ai-record.com/organizations/openai", "aiVendor": true, "work": { "title": "OpenAI's Head of ChatGPT: We're entering a new era of AI (again)", "type": "podcast", "date": "2026-10-04", "publisher": "Lenny's Podcast (YouTube)", "locator": "21:47", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MM-C3JqCXBk" }, "grade": "C", "gradeMeaning": "An interview or press quote.", "verification": { "status": "reported", "meaning": "Not yet confirmed against the source by an independent second reader." }, "topics": [ "where-agents-run", "agent-permissions", "autonomy-and-oversight" ], "functions": [ "engineering", "security" ], "figures": [], "url": "https://the-ai-record.com/passages/openai-dots-production-guardrails-own-hardware-2026", "json": "https://the-ai-record.com/api/v1/passages/openai-dots-production-guardrails-own-hardware-2026.json" } ], "reportedPassages": [], "notice": [ "Every passage is reproduced word for word from the cited source.", "Check the verification status: \"reported\" means not yet confirmed by an independent second reader.", "Organizations flagged aiVendor sell AI tools or services and have a reason to publish flattering numbers.", "An empty result means the archive holds nothing on it, not that nobody has said anything." ] }