Codex is becoming OpenAI’s main work tool
OpenAI’s new economic research shows Codex-like agents moving from short question-and-answer use into longer work. By May 2026, 80.6% of sampled individual Codex users had made at least one request estimated to take a person more than 30 minutes, 70.2% had made one estimated above one hour, and 25.6% had made one estimated above eight hours. Inside OpenAI, the average worker used less than 10% of their on Codex through August 2025, but Codex is now the main AI work tool across every department.
The average OpenAI worker now produces more than 85% of their with Codex, and Codex accounts for 99.8% of weekly across the company. Engineers moved first, but legal, finance, and recruiting shifted to mostly Codex use around April 2026. Non-developer adoption grew especially fast: 137 times among individual users, 189 times among organizational users, and 12 times inside OpenAI since August 2025.
Non-technical teams are using Codex for , data cleanup, internal tools, , and structured analysis, not only for asking coding questions.
Key points
- Codex use is shifting from short answers to longer work.
- 70.2% of sampled individual users made at least one Codex request estimated above one hour of human work.
- Codex is now the main AI work tool across all OpenAI departments.
- Non-developer Codex adoption grew faster than developer adoption.
- Legal, finance, recruiting, and other non-technical teams use Codex for , data work, tools, , and analysis.