OpenAI Codex usage surges, personal users up over 100 times

OpenAI released a report showing a huge jump in usage of its agent AI product, Codex, since August 2025. Personal users increased 137 times, and organization users grew 189 times, with internal OpenAI employee usage also up 12 times.

In a paper called 'The Shift to Agentic AI: Evidence from Codex', OpenAI says active users of agent AI grew over 5 times in the first half of 2026, with the fastest growth coming from non-software developers. Inside OpenAI, 97.9% of staff now use Codex, up from about 40% in August 2025. External organization usage has also reached 17.3%.

Codex can handle long-term tasks continuously. Since early 2026, the share of Codex users who have submitted at least one task that would take an experienced human over 8 hours to complete has grown nearly tenfold.