OpenAI to acquire Ona to expand Codex

I don't really understand these deals in the "AI is scary and can build anything" world. OpenAI certainly could have just built this themselves? It's not like they're buying the customer base.

Ona used to be GitPod. They renamed about 9 months ago. Looks like the AI pivot paid off! Congrats.

> Today we’re announcing that OpenAI will acquire Ona (opens in a new window), bringing its secure cloud execution and orchestration technology into our rapidly expanding Codex ecosystem.

> More than 5 million people use Codex each week to research, analyze, build, and automate their work—up 400% from earlier this year. Codex began as a tool for software developers and now helps a wider range of people do complex work from an initial request through to a finished result.

> As Codex becomes more capable, its most valuable work is unfolding over hours or days, rather than minutes. We believe people should be able to delegate more ambitious work without remaining tied to the machine where it began. The work should continue beyond the initial session, with Codex making it possible to stay connected and check progress, provide direction, make decisions, and review results from anywhere.

Seems compute layer ownership is going to be critical going forward

I guess that's Ona way of doing it.