OpenAI is acquiring Ona, a startup that runs AI agents in the background on cloud infrastructure, the company announced. According to CNBC, Ona's technology will allow OpenAI's coding assistant, Codex, to take on longer-running tasks — a capability the product has lacked.
Once the deal closes, Ona will fold into OpenAI's Codex team, according to reporting by MSN. The startup's core offering is a cloud-based platform designed to execute AI agents securely and persistently, meaning software programs that can work autonomously over extended periods rather than responding to single prompts.
MSN also noted that OpenAI highlighted Ona's "secure cloud execution" capabilities as a key part of the rationale, suggesting enterprise security and reliability are as important to the deal as raw performance.
Codex, OpenAI's AI-powered coding assistant, has been central to the company's push into software development automation. The acquisition appears aimed at solving a practical limitation: AI coding tools today are generally good at short, contained tasks but struggle when a job requires sustained, multi-step work running over hours or days in the background.
By bringing Ona's infrastructure in-house, OpenAI can let Codex spin up and manage long-running cloud processes without relying on third-party platforms — a meaningful step toward AI agents that can handle the kind of complex, real-world engineering work that currently requires human oversight.
The deal signals that the next frontier in AI-assisted coding isn't just smarter suggestions, but agents capable of independently executing entire workflows from start to finish.