The AI Record
For a long time, we had a 'capability overhang': the models were capable but the products didn't fully bring that out. Now, we're seeing an awareness gap. Some people have figured out they can use Codex to monitor Slack, update Airtable, or create onboarding materials. But many others still use it for one task and then discover more uses from teammates via word-of-mouth.

Akshay NathanEngineering Lead, Productivity team · Leader, OpenAI

Press report: Inside OpenAI's agentic software factory, The Pragmatic Engineer, September 15, 2026, at 1. Codex takes over at OpenAI. Reported by Gergely Orosz.

Checked against the source [ Grade C ] Said in the last year OpenAI: $20 billion revenue, ARR, 2025 Sells AI tools

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Who is speaking

Akshay Nathan, Engineering Lead, Productivity team.

OpenAI sells AI or agent tooling, so it has a reason to publish flattering numbers about AI. The passage stays in the archive; read it with that in mind.

How this was checked

Checked against the source by a first reader, then confirmed independently by a second reader who fetched the source without seeing the first reader's notes (Independent review agent (Claude Sonnet), blind second pass from passage text and citation only, no repository access, 2026-10-31).

In section 1, after 'As Akshay Nathan, Engineering Lead, Productivity team, told me:'. All four sentences match exactly; the page's curly quotes around 'capability overhang' were normalized.

How to cite this passage

Akshay Nathan (OpenAI), “Inside OpenAI's agentic software factory”, The Pragmatic Engineer, 2026-09-15, at 1. Codex takes over at OpenAI. https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/openai-software-factory Archived at https://the-ai-record.com/passages/openai-long-time-we-had-capability-overhang-models-2026

More from the same source

We're now seeing agentic code reviews that look at code changes through a series of different lenses. In the past, it would have been impractical for a cloud infrastructure engineer and a security engineer to review every single code change. With agents, that becomes possible.

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Press report: Inside OpenAI's agentic software factory, The Pragmatic Engineer, September 15, 2026, at 2. Death of the IDE & pull requests. Reported by Gergely Orosz.

Checked against the source [ Grade C ] Said in the last year OpenAI: $20 billion revenue, ARR, 2025 Sells AI tools Passage page

We are building an agent that "handholds" a change all the way to production — whether it's a code change or a change behind a feature flag. It observes the relevant monitoring graphs, but can also build its own dashboard to monitor important signals. More of our code changes are going to production with this kind of agent monitoring.

Venkat VenkataramaniVP of Engineering, Applied Infra · Leader, OpenAI

Press report: Inside OpenAI's agentic software factory, The Pragmatic Engineer, September 15, 2026, at 2. Death of the IDE & pull requests. Reported by Gergely Orosz.

Checked against the source [ Grade C ] Said in the last year OpenAI: $20 billion revenue, ARR, 2025 Sells AI tools Passage page

The number one thing that is changing is that people are starting to use threads for much longer, and this longer usage has been a breakthrough. It's surprising to see the sheer length of time that people spend on a thread – even days! They often set a goal and then have the model crank.

Andrew AmbrosinoLead, Desktop · Leader, OpenAI

Press report: Inside OpenAI's agentic software factory, The Pragmatic Engineer, September 15, 2026, at 1. Codex takes over at OpenAI. Reported by Gergely Orosz.

Checked against the source [ Grade C ] Said in the last year OpenAI: $20 billion revenue, ARR, 2025 Sells AI tools Passage page

We're talking about roughly a 10x increase in load on some systems. At most companies, that kind of growth might happen over two or three years. At OpenAI, we see it in about six months.

Venkat VenkataramaniVP of Engineering, Applied Infra · Leader, OpenAI

Press report: Inside OpenAI's agentic software factory, The Pragmatic Engineer, September 15, 2026, at 2. Death of the IDE & pull requests. Reported by Gergely Orosz.

  • 10 x build pipeline load increase, about six months. Level not stated

Checked against the source [ Grade C ] Said in the last year OpenAI: $20 billion revenue, ARR, 2025 Sells AI tools Passage page

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