OpenAI acquires Ona to give Codex agents persistent cloud execution

OpenAI is acquiring Ona, a company specializing in secure cloud execution and orchestration, to solve a practical tension in its Codex agent platform.

While Codex has grown 400% to over 5 million weekly users, the most valuable agentic work now unfolds over hours or days, not minutes.

The core problem is that agents remain tied to the machine where a session began, which limits how organizations can delegate ambitious, persistent work without staying tethered to that session.

Ona‘s technology directly addresses this by providing secure, persistent cloud environments where agents can keep running even when a developer closes their laptop.