OpenAI said it plans to acquire Ona, a start-up that provides pre-configured cloud environments where AI agents can access tools, systems and context, as it seeks to bolster its Codex programming tool.

Ona’s technology will allow Codex to handle longer-running tasks, and will help more organisations apply AI agents to production tasks, OpenAI said.

Ona’s staff are to join OpenAI’s Codex team once the deal has closed, subject to customary conditions.

“It feels like our life’s work just got bigger and more important,” wrote Ona chief executive Johannes Landgraf in a social media post.

OpenAI, which launched the current AI boom with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, has more recently shifted strategy to focus more on business products and programming tools, areas where competitor Anthropic – founded by former OpenAI employees – has gained an advantage.

Anthropic’s Claude Code became a viral success with programmers late last year, and the company has been touting its Mythos model as adept at hacking into critical business and government systems.

OpenAI said its Codex has grown to more than 5 million weekly users, up from 3 million in April. Anthropic does not disclose Claude Code user figures.

Both start-ups have filed confidential paperwork for public offerings planned for the coming months, a move intended to give them access to public markets to help fund costly computing services.

Aerospace firm SpaceX, which sells data centre capacity to Anthropic after its acquisition of xAI earlier this year, went public in a record-breaking offering on Friday.