OpenAI says Codex and ChatGPT Work have 40M active users

Why it matters

OpenAI is grouping coding and workplace agents into a single adoption story as it broadens ChatGPT with GPT-6. The 40M figure is company-reported and combines products with different earlier usage measures, so it shows reach without clarifying repeat use or each product's individual growth.

OpenAI says Codex and ChatGPT Work together reached 40 million active users, a milestone product lead Thibault "Tibo" Sottiaux shared on October 7th as GPT-6 began rolling out in ChatGPT's Chat tab. Sottiaux said the company would also add a banked usage reset to paid accounts.

The 40 million figure is OpenAI's, posted by Sottiaux in a thread on X. It combines two products and comes without a stated measurement window in the post. That makes it a useful signal of the combined audience OpenAI is building around AI agents, but not a clean measure of how many people use either product regularly, or how quickly either one is growing on its own.

OpenAI's earlier figures use different measures. In June, the company said Codex had passed 5 million weekly users. In an August 25th interview, Sottiaux said ChatGPT Work had reached 20 million users. Those counts provide context, but they cannot be directly compared with the new combined figure: one is weekly Codex users, one is Work users, and the October post describes active users across both without specifying a period. The 40 million total therefore does not establish that Work doubled, or that Codex's audience grew eightfold.

The timing ties the usage claim to a wider product push. OpenAI's October 7th GPT-6 announcement introduced GPT-6 in ChatGPT's Chat tab, alongside Intelligent UI, which can return interactive elements such as charts, forms and tappable controls. OpenAI says the Chat release is separate from the models powering Work and Codex. The new ChatGPT interface broadens the product surface on the same day Sottiaux promoted a combined Work-and-Codex audience figure.

Sottiaux has described that expansion as a deliberate move beyond software development. In an August interview with TechCrunch, he said OpenAI wanted to "bring the power of coding agents to everyone." The goal is to make agent workflows usable by people who do not write code, through ChatGPT Work, while Codex remains geared toward software development and technical work.

That positioning is visible in the products. OpenAI introduced ChatGPT Work in July as an agent for carrying out longer tasks across connected apps and files, producing deliverables such as documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The launch post said more than 1 million people were using Codex for work outside software development, even as the product had started as a coding agent. OpenAI is bringing those adjacent use cases under a broader workplace pitch rather than treating coding as the limit of agent adoption.

Sottiaux's reset offer connects the milestone to a practical constraint: usage allowances. In the post, he said paid accounts would receive a banked reset, a reserve that users can apply later rather than an immediate refresh. OpenAI's help documentation describes usage resets as offers with eligibility and terms that can vary, so the post's promise to paid accounts is the specific claim for this rollout. The reset may encourage users who have hit a limit to return to the products, while the 40 million figure gives OpenAI a broad adoption number to attach to its agent strategy.

For now, the headline total says more about OpenAI's bundling strategy than the independent traction of either product. Work extends the agent interface to general office tasks; Codex carries the developer use case; ChatGPT's new Chat experience puts GPT-6 and interactive responses in front of its much larger audience. The company's next challenge is converting that reach into sustained use of tasks that run beyond a single prompt. The October announcement establishes the size of the combined audience by OpenAI's measure, not how often users return or how much of that activity comes from paying customers.