PRODUCT

OpenAI turns Codex into a multi-agent tool

OpenAI's Codex has become the tool of choice for many developers, prompting the company to unveil a new, more helpful interface.

On Monday, OpenAI launched the Codex app for macOS, which is more than just another access point. It introduces a more intuitive interface that unlocks new capabilities, such as managing multiple agents in parallel.

The Codex app now has an interface more similar to ChatGPT, but optimized for coding, with agents running in separate threads organized by project. It also includes built-in support for worktrees, allowing multiple agents to work on the same repo without interfering with each other. 

“The Codex app is [now] a dedicated command center for managing agents,” said Alexander Embiricos, Product Lead for Codex, in a press briefing. 

A key addition is a dedicated interface for managing Agent Skills, which apply specific instructions to coding, from enforcing team preferences to running workflows. The app also introduces Automations, enabling agents to run in the background on a schedule.

Codex updates coming to all platforms include: 

• Codex will now have two personalities: the more terse one users are used to, and a new conversational and empathetic one. 

• For a limited time, Codex will also be available to ChatGPT Free and Go users, in addition to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise or Edu subscribers. This includes the macOS app. Paid subscribers will receive double the rate limit during this period. 

To address security concerns, the company says the app uses native, open-source, and configurable sandboxing, similar to the Codex CLI, and that it is limited to making edits in the file it's working on. 

“These models have gotten much better, they do mostly reasonable things, and that is not an entire safety strategy, but it does mean that, for low-stakes things, we are comfortable relying on the model in ways [we're not used to] — with some guardrails,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in the same press briefing.

Our team received early access to Codex, and CEO Faris Kojok has been putting it through its paces over the past several days. "This isn't just a Claude Code competitor," he said. "It's OpenAI's bet that the future of AI-assisted development isn't about pairing with one agent — it's about managing a team of them." He reported that several things worked well: it can simultaneously run three agents on one project (which is genuinely new), scheduled automations actually ran on time, and creating custom "skills" took less than a minute. In his experience, setup wasn't as easy as OpenAI made it sound. But he observed that the difference between Claude Code and Codex is that Codex lets you delegate to a team of agents and review their work.

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MARKETS

Will xAI gain legitimacy from SpaceX tie-up?

Elon Musk just moved $250 billion from one pocket to another. 

On Monday, Musk’s aerospace firm SpaceX announced it would acquire xAI, his AI company that also owns the social media platform X. Although the companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, The Information reported that the acquisition is valued at $250 billion.

The combined company stated in its announcement that the acquisition would form “the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth.” SpaceX reiterated its ambition to build space-based data centers to harness solar energy for AI training. 

“This marks not just the next chapter, but the next book in SpaceX and xAI's mission: scaling to make a sentient sun to understand the Universe and extend the light of consciousness to the stars,” the company said in its announcement. 

According to Bloomberg, the deal notches the combined company a $1.25 trillion valuation ahead of its upcoming IPO, and is expected to price the shares at $526.59 each. Notably, this valuation would allow SpaceX to leapfrog OpenAI as the world’s most valuable startup (and likely fuel Musk’s rivalry with CEO Sam Altman). OpenAI is targeting a valuation of up to $830 billion as it courts investors for an upcoming twelve-figure funding round. 

The deal also adds another layer to Musk’s Russian nesting doll of companies, as xAI acquired X, formerly Twitter, last March, in a deal worth $45 billion ($33 billion when taking into account its $12 billion in debt), bringing together the companies’ “data, models, compute, distribution and talent.” That deal helped ease investor concerns as the social media platform’s value declined under Musk’s stewardship.

Along with pleasing investors (and outmaneuvering Altman), this move could give xAI greater legitimacy. The company has been embroiled in scandal after scandal for the outputs of its flagship model, Grok, ranging from spewing antisemitic content to generating millions of nudes, some of which are underage, earning it an “unacceptable risk” ranking from advocacy organization Common Sense Media. While the acquisition might not change the model itself, being in proximity to SpaceX could elevate the company’s reputation among peers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

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• Manage agents, data flows, and security protocols from a single hub for seamless control.

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BIG TECH

Snowflake taps its AI data advantage for agents

Snowflake has a built-in advantage in AI since many enterprises already store much of their data on its cloud platform. The next step is to launch agentic AI that can act directly on that data.

On Tuesday, the company unveiled Cortex Code, an AI coding agent that understands and operates off a deep understanding of the company’s data, which the company explains is the tool’s competitive edge against more “generic” coding tools. 

“The real limitation of AI coding today isn’t model capability – it’s context. Enterprises run on systems with rules around data, access, and accountability, and most coding agents don’t operate with those constraints in mind,” Dwarak Rajagopal, VP of AI Engineering and Research at Snowflake, told The Deep View. “Cortex Code was built directly on Snowflake’s governed data foundation, so that context is inherent by design."

With the new AI agent, all organization members can build analytics, data pipelines, and AI apps faster, regardless of technical expertise, while staying aligned with Snowflake’s existing data governance policies. 

Cortex Code can be used across Snowflake experiences and local developer environments to fit naturally into users’ workflows. Accessing Cortex Code in the users’ preferred terminal or code editor, such as VS Code or Cursor, via the Cortex Code CLI is now generally available. Accessing Cortex Code on the Snowflake platform via Cortex Code in Snowsight will be generally available soon. 

Other announcements included: 

• A new integration with v0 by Vercel enables employees to vibe-code AI-powered data apps in Snowflake using Snowpark Container Services, which will be generally available soon. 

• An integration with the Brave Search API brings real-time web knowledge into Snowflake Intelligence, the company’s AI product suite that includes Cortex Code and Cortex Agents, now in public preview. 

• Snowflake updated its collaborative workspaces with Shared Workspaces, Snowflake Notebooks, and OpenID Connect (OIDC)-based authentication, all being generally available. 

This follows Monday's announcement of a multi-year, $200 million partnership that will further integrate OpenAI's tools into Snowflake's platform for both employees and clients, and help deploy better agentic solutions to Snowflake customers.

While 2025 was dubbed the “year of agents” by many, 2026 is shaping up to be the year agents get to work. Agentic tools like Clawdbot (then MoltBot, now OpenClaw) are going viral, with the agents even creating their own social media platform. To make things even more meta, OpenClaw’s creator, Peter Steinberger, built the tool using OpenAI’s agentic coding assistant Codex, which got a major upgrade this week. In the announcement, OpenAI revealed that four engineers built and shipped the Sora Android app in just 18 days using Codex. The rapid pace of these upgrades and products demonstrates both how prevalent agents are becoming and how they're driving the next wave of innovation.

LINKS

• India gives massive tax incentives to foreign cloud firms through 2047

• Mozilla will now let users disable Firefox AI features

• Waymo raises $16 billion at a $126 billion valuation 

• Google expands Game Arena to two new gaming benchmarks

• Oracle says Nvidia’s OpenAI deal has “zero impact” on its partnership

• AI-powered CRM service Day AI raises $20 million from Sequoia

• Grok Imagine 1.0: xAI’s latest video generating model that is free to use and the company calls its “biggest leap yet.” 

• Muse: A free agentic AI tool that creates musical compositions and functions as a “cursor for music.” 

• Bing: Multi-turn search in Bing is now available worldwide which lets users ask natural language search queries even as they scroll down in search results. 

• Qwen-Coder-Qoder: The agentic coding platform, Qoder, launched a customized model built on Alibaba’s Qwen-Coder. 

• OpenAI Codex: The agentic coding tool now has a macOS app a

• AMD: Applied ML researcher, Generative AI - Advanced Graphics Programs

• Anduril: Staff Software Engineer, Security

• Radiant Security: AI Applied Researcher

• Nvidia: Lead Senior Software Engineer, Agentic AI Applications

GAMES

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