Codex is becoming a productivity tool for everyone

OpenAI today released a new report, The Next Era of Knowledge Work, showing how Codex is no longer just a coding tool. Increasingly, it’s helping people across professions automate routine work, move faster, and eliminate the bottlenecks of modern knowledge work.

Codex now has more than 5 million weekly active users, up more than 6x since the launch of the desktop app in February. While developers remain the largest user group, knowledge workers now represent about 20 percent of users and are growing more than three times as fast.

The data suggests a broader shift is underway. Knowledge workers primarily use Codex to create reports, spreadsheets, presentations, contracts, and other work products. They are also increasingly using it for research, data analysis, workflow automation, and building lightweight tools that previously required engineering support.

The fastest-growing knowledge-worker tasks are data analysis, research, and knowledge artifact creation. At the same time, users are increasingly running multiple Codex tasks in parallel, allowing them to investigate data, draft materials, and automate workflows simultaneously. This kind of increased velocity could reshape AI’s long-term impact on work: Codex can help people take on more ambitious projects, leading to greater scope of their roles, and potentially accelerate career advancement.

Across industries, the pattern is similar: people are using Codex to reduce the friction of modern work. It helps them find information buried across systems, coordinate work across tools and teams, produce high-quality deliverables, and move projects through review and approval processes.