OpenAI acquires Ona (ex-Gitpod) so Codex agents can work inside your cloud for days, not minutes

OpenAI announced June 11 it's acquiring Ona — the startup formerly known as Gitpod (founded 2019, 2 million developer users) — to bring persistent, customer-controlled cloud execution directly into Codex. The transaction is pending regulatory approval; Ona's team joins OpenAI's Codex group on close.

The problem. Codex has crossed 5 million weekly users (400% growth since early 2026) and increasingly handles complex multi-step work. But the most valuable tasks unfold over hours or days, not minutes. Running those tasks on OpenAI's infrastructure means shipping code, credentials, and project context to a third party — a dealbreaker for regulated industries, government contractors, and any team with strict data residency requirements.

What Ona changes. Ona provides pre-configured, ephemeral cloud environments with tools, access controls, and full audit trails already built in. The acquisition inverts the trust model: OpenAI provides the intelligence; the execution runs inside the customer's own VPC. Codex agents can access your production database, internal APIs, or GitHub Enterprise with credentials that never leave your perimeter. Each run gets a scoped ephemeral environment, destroyed on completion.

The enterprise trust play. This is a direct move to compete with Anthropic's Agent SDK architecture, which similarly lets enterprise teams run agents against internal systems with the model hosted externally. Per The Next Web, the deal "positions OpenAI to compete with Anthropic for enterprise trust in AI agent deployment." The winner of the enterprise agent category in 2026-2027 is likely the vendor that solves the "I'm not comfortable with my secrets leaving my perimeter" problem most cleanly.

What to watch. Expect Ona's execution environment capability to land in the Codex API and enterprise tiers within a quarter of deal close. If you're evaluating coding agents for regulated environments, put the Ona architecture on your shortlist alongside Anthropic's Agent SDK. The shape of this feature — intelligence-as-a-service into your own execution environment — is likely where the entire enterprise AI agent market is heading.

Sources: OpenAI: To acquire Ona, The Next Web: OpenAI acquires Ona for Codex, CNBC: OpenAI to acquire Ona, Yahoo Finance, MLQ: OpenAI acquires Ona for longer-running Codex tasks