We're Joining OpenAI
41 comments
·September 3, 2025CyberMacGyver
kridsdale3
Au contraire, based on their recent hires, they're just beginning their Facebook phase. Expect to see a lot of ads 2 years from now, and expect to see a LOT of money being made by the company a year after that.
If they can maintain runway until then.
dfsegoat
> Expect to see a lot of ads 2 years from now
I think I am just slow today - but could you please elaborate?
bobbiechen
I wrote about this idea here: https://digitalseams.com/blog/the-ai-lifestyle-subsidy-is-go...
Quick summary, I believe consumer AI experiences will feature ads because the profit opportunity is too large and company valuations depend on it. The hiring of Fidji Simo (ads at Facebook) at OpenAI + and just this week, Vijaye Raji/Statsig also point that way.
joaogui1
Ads on ChatGPT as a way to extract more money from users
dcchambers
Are people really going to keep using these AI tools if they start shoving ads down our throats?
layoric
Just by the nature of the product, the manipulation will be a lot more subtle, and likely more successful than traditional ads..
babelfish
Do you use any free web search tool?
ornornor
Worked for every tech company so far.
Mistletoe
I love your username. So many good memories from that show.
elpakal
Are they basically buying users here? I agree with the other comments about Claude being better, and now that the new Xcode will ship with a Claude integration I wonder about this.
eCa
I don't use Alex so this doesn't affect me, but:
> our plan is to continue serving you.
How many months until OpenAI no longer feels it?
MOARDONGZPLZ
Since time immemorial acquired companies have claimed this sort of thing and then the acquiring companies have shut it down quick. Practically a meme at this point.
codegeek
" but will stop new downloads of the app on October 1st."
This tells me that they wont be supporting it forever and at some point will sunset it. I could be totally wrong of course.
righthand
12-60, but most of the acquisitions I seen executed: the teams are subsumed and the product put on life-support around 18 months in.
whinvik
The failed Windsurf bid and this makes me think OpenAI feels they need to focus more on the coding agent use case.
Still thinking about the endgame. Its not obvious to me if OpenAI/Anthropic will become competitors to coding startups like Cursor or continue to be model providers.
gabelschlager
I think the endgame is a shift toward a platform of services that tightly bind users to a single LLM provider.
Right now, many small startups are essentially just thin wrappers around ChatGPT. Once it becomes clear which ideas and solutions gain real traction, providers like OpenAI/Anthropic can simply roll out those features natively removing any need for a third party.
In a sense, a lot of what happened with the mobile market. For example, there's no need for a QR scanner or document scanner app anymore, if your phone starts to offer it natively.
on_meds
In my view Anthropic is already a competitor to Cursor, while also being a model provider to them.
OpenAI has been trying to get into the space with their multiple product offerings all called “codex” but execution has been lacking.
So this is very much a play at becoming more competitive in the space.
CuriouslyC
Neither type has agents in their DNA. The IDE agent companies are dragging an enormous vestigial appendage, and the the scientists at frontier labs are stuck in the next token prediction mindset. This needs a systems engineering approach with online learning from feedback and high throughput optimization experiments run end to end.
mynegation
I totally do not understand why Apple did not buy them. It’s not that they have anything like that already.
zitterbewegung
Hrm, this makes sense their new model Alex was okay but due to XCode having Chatgpt and Claude access if Chatgpt wants people that have more experience with Swift / SwiftUI and all of the platforms. I have used Alex codes for a long time and was already planning to move to XCode's integration with Claude since I find Chatgpt 5 to be lacking. I also wouldn't see how viable the app is long term expecially with the power users who pay $200 for it not breaking even since they are still proxying another service (but they did create their own LLM which IMHO was worse than claude).
Destiner
makes sense, it kinda not super useful once xcode added native AI coding features
liurenju
I personally enjoy using Alex code even though I also use claude code and cursor. But saw they will join openAi today, and I am wondering whether this is more like joining openAi without an interview or openAi really believes Alex code is an excellent product and would like to integrate the features into their codex?
yahoozoo
So companies like this one are being acquired because they just have really good/niche system prompts? I mean, they all use the same models as everyone else, right?
xwowsersx
I'm speculating here, but my guess is that the urgency for OpenAI isn't that the Alex team has a "secret prompt." It's that they've already done the heavy lifting to make LLM coding assistants actually usable in a domain (Apple platforms) where OAI doesn't have integrations yet.
Acquiring them gives OAI:
- ready-made team that understands the IDE plumbing and the developer UX at a deep level
- head start in a platform ecosystem that's hard to crack
3. team that knows how to push the models into productized, developer-ready experiences
So it's not the prompts. It's engineering the scaffolding and UX around the model so it feels like magic to the user. That's what OpenAI is buying.
Also possible that Alex solved a lot of UX and integration challenges that could translate to other Apple contexts (productivity apps, design tools, even consumer-facing AI on macOS/iOS).
Without having used Alex myself (I don't do iOS or macOS development), I would guess that all the retrieval, context slicing, editor integration yada yada that they've built aren't necessarily unique to coding. Same scaffolding could support things like AI-driven writing, design, or general productivity in an Apple-native way.
asdev
isn't this useless with Claude Code now?
liurenju
absolutely no. Alex is heavily optimized for xcode. If you work on an ios project that has more than 700 files, you'll understand how accurate it captures the context.
emehex
If your iOS project has more than 700 files... you might be doing it wrong?
mjmahone17
In your mind is 700 files a lot or a little? It feels very small to me, and Xcode really ought to be able to handle that tiny scale on modern machines with ease.
I struggle to imagine a team of more than 10 people writing an iOS app with less than 700 files.
kridsdale3
Instagram.app likely has 30,000 files for iOS. And it produces 10-figures of revenue. So how is that wrong?
blueboo
Bear in mind 600 of those files are icon and screenshot variants for various screen dpis and spec ratios..
moomoo11
I mean.. say its an enterprise mobile app. Maybe there are 2 shells, each shell has 5 tabs. Each tab might have 5 screens on it.. that's 50 files already just for the screens. Each screen might have various UI components or steppers, etc.
Most noobs, such as those who think 700 files is too many because they've only worked on apps they never published, might just cram everything into that one file.
However, there would be various files for components, functions, etc. Code that's single responsibility and easy to test might mean there are lots of files. There might be upload queues, offline functionality, custom code to go beyond what the ios/android SDKs offer, and so on. DTOs, DAOs, etc. various services..
You probably (won't) get the gist but yeah.
jshchnz
stoked for this, think it will be great for Codex!
liurenju
I actually feel a little bit disappointed as they no longer rolls out new features after oct 1st :(
hugedickfounder
[dead]
At this rate it’s better to start a company and get aquihired vs applying and getting hired.
Seems like OpenAI speed ran through the Facebook phase and are out of ideas