In a major milestone for the “AI coding wars,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman confirmed on X that the company’s standalone Codex application (currently only for Mac computers) surpassed 1 million downloads in its first week of availability, echoing the explosive growth of OpenAI’s hit chatbot ChatGPT after it first launched in late 2022.The surge reflects a 60% week-over-week growth in overall Codex users, following the February 2 launch of the app and the subsequent release of the underlying GPT-5.3-Codex model.While OpenAI is currently celebrating this rapid adoption, the company is signaling that the era of unlimited free access to its most powerful agentic tools is transitioning toward a more restricted model.The agentic coding command centerUnlike traditional auto-complete plugins, the Codex app is positioned as a “command center” for agentic coding. It utilizes GPT-5.3-Codex, a model OpenAI describes as its most capable agentic model to date. Notably, Altman claimed that the model was instrumental in its own creation, with early versions used to debug the very training runs that produced the final release.The app’s primary innovation is its ability to orchestrate multiple AI agents simultaneously. According to OpenAI’s release notes, the app allows users to:Run Parallel Worktrees: Deploy independent agents to explore different code paths simultaneously without branch conflicts.Delegate Long-Running Tasks: Offload routine maintenance, such as dependency updates and test runs, to background automations.Supervise Coordinated Teams: Move between agents in a unified desktop interface while maintaining full context of a complex project.Limits coming to low-cost and free usersThe 1 million download milestone was catalyzed by OpenAI’s decision to offer Codex access to ChatGPT Free and “Go” tier users for a limited promotional period. However, Altman has warned that this high-compute “free lunch” is not permanent.”We’ll keep Codex available to Free/Go users after this promotion; we may have to reduce limits there but we want everyone to be able to try Codex and start building,” Altman shared on X.This shift aligns with OpenAI’s broader strategy to manage the immense costs of its “High capability” models and applications.While paid OpenAI ChatGPT subscribers ( …
