OpenAI’s Codex head sees “incredible” adoption across Asia

Tech in Asia recently caught up with Thibault Sottiaux, head of Codex at OpenAI, about the rise of AI coding agents and what they could mean for software development on the sidelines of AI Engineer Singapore. The interview has been edited for length and clarity, and first appeared in our weekly AI newsletter.

Thibault Sottiaux, head of Codex at OpenAI/ Photo credit: OpenAI

Codex recently crossed 4 million weekly active users, up from 3 million just weeks ago. Where is that growth coming from? Are startups driving this, or are enterprises becoming the bigger story?

It’s both, but for different reasons. Startups and individual developers moved first because Codex gives them immediate leverage. You can go from an idea to shipping something much faster, and that matters a lot when you’re operating alone or in a small team.

But what’s becoming interesting now is the enterprise side. The way I think about Codex is that we are building an agent first, then figuring out the best places to put that agent to work.

I keep coming back to Asia Pacific as an example, because the pace of adoption here is incredible. Weekly active users in Asia Pacific grew 11x, faster than our global growth. And if you look at Singapore alone, it’s already a top five market globally for Codex adoption and engagement.

There are plenty of examples emerging in the region, but one that’s top of mind for me is Sea Limited. They’ve rolled out across their engineering organization, with OpenAI internal data showing 87% of Sea users are weekly active users.

So I would not frame it as startups versus enterprises. Startups showed how quickly Codex can change the speed of building. Enterprises are showing how it becomes part of the operating system for software teams, and eventually a pattern for how agents can support many kinds of work across a company.

Have you seen any interesting, clever, or unique use cases emerge from users in Asia that surprised you?

One example I really like is Hiroki Tomiyasu, a farmer in Japan. He does not come from a traditional engineering background, but he used ChatGPT and Codex to build practical tools for his farm, from greenhouse controls to remote temperature management.

What stands out to me is that Hiroki was already closest to the problem. Codex helped him move directly from understanding the frustration to building a working solution, without needing an external vendor or a software team.

Codex is not just making development faster. It is making development accessible to more people, so real-world problems can be solved by the people who understand them best.

Southeast Asia is especially interesting because the problems are very practical. Builders here often have to solve many things at once: different markets, multiple languages, and complex flows. That creates the kind of high-context environment where agents can be useful.

There’s a growing argument against using agentic coding tools. Some argue they create code bloat, more technical debt, and don’t necessarily improve product velocity. What do you think critics are getting wrong or right?