Exclusive: OpenAI targets Microsoft's GitHub with deal
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OpenAI will acquire Pierre Computer, a developer tools startup whose technology is already embedded in Codex, the company told Axios exclusively.
Why it matters: OpenAI is joining a slew of companies challenging Microsoft's GitHub as AI agents take on more coding work. The platform has acted as a central repository and nerve center for software development for many years.
Zoom out: GitHub has faced a number of reliability issues and outages as AI coding has taken off.
- Its most pressing problem, critics say, is that it was built for humans, but so much software is now written by AI that a new, AI-first GitHub replacement would be better.
Friction point: OpenAI and a number of other competitors may be looking to capitalize on the shift.
- Cursor, now owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX, launched GitHub rival Origin in August.
- Former GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke, who launched a new coding startup, announced a competing product last month.
- Microsoft owns nearly a quarter of OpenAI, although the two companies also compete in a variety of ways, a dynamic that is common across the competitive AI landscape.
Driving the news: OpenAI plans to integrate Pierre's Code Storage function into Codex, where Pierre's technology is already used.
- Financial terms were not disclosed. Pierre's open-source projects will remain open-source.
Between the lines: Earlier this week, OpenAI revealed Pando, built to handle the explosion of code generated by AI agents.
- OpenAI says Pando reduced the time needed to push code changes by nearly 80%.
- The company is now exploring ways to make the technology available to customers.
The bottom line: OpenAI is moving beyond helping developers write code toward controlling more of the infrastructure where that code is stored, reviewed and shipped.
