We're Joining OpenAI

https://www.alexcodes.app/blog/alex-team-joins-openai

by liurenju • 11 months ago

200 153 11 months ago

liurenju3• 11 months ago

I personally enjoy using Alex code even though I also use claude code and cursor. But saw they will join openAi today, and I am wondering whether this is more like joining openAi without an interview or openAi really believes Alex code is an excellent product and would like to integrate the features into their codex?

mrweasel• 11 months ago

The word joining always annoys me. I doubt very much that the Alex team is joining OpenAI, they where bought out. Joining implies some sort of semi-equal partnership, which I very much doubt this is.

_heimdall• 11 months ago

I read the GP comment as referring to an acquihire situation, not joining as any level of partnership role in the OpenAI business.

jshchnz• 11 months ago

stoked for this, think it will be great for Codex!

liurenju3• 11 months ago

I actually feel a little bit disappointed as they no longer rolls out new features after oct 1st :(

asdev• 11 months ago

isn't this useless with Claude Code now?

liurenju3• 11 months ago

absolutely no. Alex is heavily optimized for xcode. If you work on an ios project that has more than 700 files, you'll understand how accurate it captures the context.

emehex• 11 months ago

If your iOS project has more than 700 files... you might be doing it wrong?

sumedh• 11 months ago

Alex is heavily optimized for xcode.

Is there a reason why the Claude cannot do the same thing?

zitterbewegung• 11 months ago

Hrm, this makes sense their new model Alex was okay but due to XCode having Chatgpt and Claude access if Chatgpt wants people that have more experience with Swift / SwiftUI and all of the platforms. I have used Alex codes for a long time and was already planning to move to XCode's integration with Claude since I find Chatgpt 5 to be lacking. I also wouldn't see how viable the app is long term expecially with the power users who pay $200 for it not breaking even since they are still proxying another service (but they did create their own LLM which IMHO was worse than claude).

CyberMacGyver• 11 months ago

At this rate it’s better to start a company and get aquihired vs applying and getting hired.

Seems like OpenAI speed ran through the Facebook phase and are out of ideas

kridsdale32• 11 months ago

Au contraire, based on their recent hires, they're just beginning their Facebook phase. Expect to see a lot of ads 2 years from now, and expect to see a LOT of money being made by the company a year after that.

If they can maintain runway until then.

dfsegoat2• 11 months ago

Expect to see a lot of ads 2 years from now

I think I am just slow today - but could you please elaborate?

dcchambers2• 11 months ago

Are people really going to keep using these AI tools if they start shoving ads down our throats?

homefree• 11 months ago

Yeah it could be insanely valuable and it'll give them an advantage by letting them add more features to the free ad supported product to expand their reach and cement their position.

holoduke2• 11 months ago

I see mcps from ebay alike coming to openai.

morkalork• 11 months ago

Who will pull the ads trigger first, OpenAI or Google I wonder. Whoever leads could lose a lot of users to the other, but they will soon follow.

vessenes• 11 months ago

oAI rev exceeds $1b per month right now.

simianwords2• 11 months ago

I predict this won’t be the case. The switching cost to a non Ad LLM is too low for me to be bothered with an ad based LLM.

OpenAI must justify ads when its competitors are not sending ads. Why would they? OpenAI models must be so good that it should be worth dealing with ads compared to say Claude or DeepSeek.

bilekas• 11 months ago

From my perspective, I'm so tired of ads being the main source of revenue on the internet. If they're added to chatgpt for example I will most definitely be moving to another that has no ads. Probably I don't represent the masses but I hate this rush to the bottom with adverts.

verzali• 11 months ago

I do what I can to waste OpenAI cash by getting the free version of chatgpt to write dirty limericks about Sam Altman.

DrScientist2• 11 months ago

I do wonder whether we will switch back to ads or there is/will be a big switch to the subscription type model.

Would you trust output from OpenAI which is sponsered? I mean it's bad enough now in the ad space where they are increasingly trying to make the ads look more like content - imagine that in woven into your ChatGPT output?

The younger generation are quite used to subscription models - netflix, spotify, various gaming platforms etc. Perhaps access just becomes part of your internet access bundle.

seunosewa• 11 months ago

Their non-profit status may be an impediment to maximising profits.

jamesbrek982• 11 months ago

OpenAI already runs ads on Instagram for its ChatGPT app, advertising what it can do for you and your day to day things.

Mistletoe• 11 months ago

I love your username. So many good memories from that show.

999900000999• 11 months ago

From what I've seen you still need to be well connected.

I have at least one more idea in me and invest my own money to make it happen, but I don't think I'll have a 2 billion dollar exit.

LewisVerstappen• 11 months ago

At this rate it’s better to start a company and get aquihired vs applying and getting hired.

Then do it.

Since when did HN become like Reddit? Always negative about everything?

Feels like all the losers from Reddit have somehow migrated here.

blitzar• 11 months ago

Given employees (especially at higher levels) of companies wouldnt pass their own "interview" process its a legitimate tactic to getting into the buzier companies these days

eCa• 11 months ago

I don't use Alex so this doesn't affect me, but:

our plan is to continue serving you.

How many months until OpenAI no longer feels it?

righthand• 11 months ago

12-60, but most of the acquisitions I seen executed: the teams are subsumed and the product put on life-support around 18 months in.

MOARDONGZPLZ• 11 months ago

Since time immemorial acquired companies have claimed this sort of thing and then the acquiring companies have shut it down quick. Practically a meme at this point.

fuzztester• 11 months ago

It's not only a meme, it's a Tumblog too, and I first saw it many years ago.

Google "our incredible journey".

https://www.google.com/search?q=our+incredible+journey

https://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2013/02/27/our-incredibl...

https://www.tumblr.com/ourincrediblejourney

vjvjvjvjghv• 11 months ago

I still can't forgive Apple to buy darksky and then killing it. It was so good and Apple Weather is still not even close. Why are these big companies buying small companies that have a great product and just let it die without using their tech?

codegeek• 11 months ago

" but will stop new downloads of the app on October 1st."

This tells me that they wont be supporting it forever and at some point will sunset it. I could be totally wrong of course.

thorum• 11 months ago

A coding agent that receives no updates will be useless very soon. In a few months they’ll tell you to switch to Codex CLI, and that will in fact be a good recommendation.

destitude• 11 months ago

Highly likely the next major Xcode update will break it.

philipwhiuk2• 11 months ago

December

Destiner• 11 months ago

makes sense, it kinda not super useful once xcode added native AI coding features

whinvik• 11 months ago

The failed Windsurf bid and this makes me think OpenAI feels they need to focus more on the coding agent use case.

Still thinking about the endgame. Its not obvious to me if OpenAI/Anthropic will become competitors to coding startups like Cursor or continue to be model providers.

CuriouslyC• 11 months ago

Neither type has agents in their DNA. The IDE agent companies are dragging an enormous vestigial appendage, and the the scientists at frontier labs are stuck in the next token prediction mindset. This needs a systems engineering approach with online learning from feedback and high throughput optimization experiments run end to end.

on_meds• 11 months ago

In my view Anthropic is already a competitor to Cursor, while also being a model provider to them.

OpenAI has been trying to get into the space with their multiple product offerings all called “codex” but execution has been lacking.

So this is very much a play at becoming more competitive in the space.

gabelschlager• 11 months ago

I think the endgame is a shift toward a platform of services that tightly bind users to a single LLM provider.

Right now, many small startups are essentially just thin wrappers around ChatGPT. Once it becomes clear which ideas and solutions gain real traction, providers like OpenAI/Anthropic can simply roll out those features natively removing any need for a third party.

In a sense, a lot of what happened with the mobile market. For example, there's no need for a QR scanner or document scanner app anymore, if your phone starts to offer it natively.

kaptainscarlet2• 11 months ago

Does anyone else remember how we used to have flash light apps all over the playstore and how they quickly varnished once the feature was implement natively?

tern• 11 months ago

This seems correct to me. I'm unusually appreciative of vertical integration (life-long Apple user, etc.), and I can already feel the vendor lock-in tightening. I have no need for anything other than my ChatGPT subscription, and adding other tools appears to offer marginal gain at double the cost.

This type of bundling appears to be one of the strongest forces in the economy today, and I think comes about consistently due to a confluence of efficiencies of scale, coordination, and second-order effects of prestige (being able to hire and pay large numbers of outlier high performing employees, etc.)

I've learned not to bet against it, except in niche areas.

dragonwriter• 11 months ago

Its not obvious to me if OpenAI/Anthropic will become competitors to coding startups like Cursor or continue to be model providers.

They’ll do both: continue to be model providers while also leveraging their position as model providers to own as many of the valauble markets in which models are used as possible. Kind of like Amazon and its role as both infrastructure provider and direct competitors to other sellers (on the shopping/logistics side) and SaaS vendors (on the AWS side).

_mu2• 11 months ago

Still thinking about the endgame.

It is said by some that the endgame is agents, like Devin. The IDEs are just the start of AI coding.

yahoozoo• 11 months ago

So companies like this one are being acquired because they just have really good/niche system prompts? I mean, they all use the same models as everyone else, right?

xwowsersx• 11 months ago

I'm speculating here, but my guess is that the urgency for OpenAI isn't that the Alex team has a "secret prompt." It's that they've already done the heavy lifting to make LLM coding assistants actually usable in a domain (Apple platforms) where OAI doesn't have integrations yet.

Acquiring them gives OAI:

- ready-made team that understands the IDE plumbing and the developer UX at a deep level

- head start in a platform ecosystem that's hard to crack

3. team that knows how to push the models into productized, developer-ready experiences

So it's not the prompts. It's engineering the scaffolding and UX around the model so it feels like magic to the user. That's what OpenAI is buying.

Also possible that Alex solved a lot of UX and integration challenges that could translate to other Apple contexts (productivity apps, design tools, even consumer-facing AI on macOS/iOS).

Without having used Alex myself (I don't do iOS or macOS development), I would guess that all the retrieval, context slicing, editor integration yada yada that they've built aren't necessarily unique to coding. Same scaffolding could support things like AI-driven writing, design, or general productivity in an Apple-native way.

elpakal4• 11 months ago

could just be the git/apply changes functionality they’re interested in. obviously speculation

mynegation• 11 months ago

I totally do not understand why Apple did not buy them. It’s not that they have anything like that already.

elpakal4• 11 months ago

Something mentioned in WWDC stuck out to me (think it was Craig) about current state of LLMs not living up to their high standard of quality. Because they absolutely could (and kind of are, with the foundation models stuff) build their own. Letting Claude or OpenAI handle the Xcode changes via their integration in the next Xcode makes more sense in that context.

saagarjha• 11 months ago

The high standard of quality that is Xcode?

dagmx• 11 months ago

As other comments have mentioned, Xcode 26 has sherlocked a lot of the functionality of Alex.

Not everything, but the majority of the features are built in.

The product is likely just not very viable after that

elpakal4• 11 months ago

Are they basically buying users here? I agree with the other comments about Claude being better, and now that the new Xcode will ship with a Claude integration I wonder about this.

philipwhiuk2• 11 months ago

No they're buying engineers.

robertjpayne• 11 months ago

The details are scant, but if I had to guess Alex probably ran out of money and after Apple showed off their Xcode AI integrations they couldn't get more funding and shopped around for an acquisition.

Daniel and his team did a great job at doing what Apple wasn't but I can't help but feel this was an inevitable outcome.

wredcoll• 11 months ago

Is this related to that awful "ai interviewer" also named alex?

arm32• 11 months ago

God, I sure hope not. That guy sucked!

dcreater• 11 months ago

I'm learning live what I had only previously vaguely understood as "exit strategy"

I'd never heard of Alex before today

ekusiadadus• 11 months ago

I do not know it's proper to say, but congrats!!

mailswept_dev2• 11 months ago

Congrats to you and the whole Alex team Huge milestone, and well deserved. Excited to see what you’ll build with the Codex team at OpenAI!

mailswept_dev2• 11 months ago

This was such a fun read. Eels sound like they’re living in a sci-fi cycle: mud, rivers, Freud’s lab, then the Bermuda Triangle. Nature really doesn’t care about fitting into neat categories.

thunkle• 11 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45115941

zahlman• 11 months ago

I know that we like unmodified titles here, but it would have been helpful to spell out who "we" refers to in this case.

jillesvangurp• 11 months ago

Could be a nice move for them and it sounds like they have some valuable skills they could add to the Codex team.

I'm pretty impressed with the web ui of Codex lately. The cli ui didn't really impress me when it came out (a bit flaky and buggy and tedious to use). But the web UI is nice. I've created a few alright PRs with it. I think I have about 60-70% merge rate, some with manual changes made by me on the same branch. I like the mode of just keeping that stuff on a branch and interacting via Git.

It has its limitations but I do like this UX and DX. And I've so far not experienced any rate limiting on the plus plan.

I'm curious to learn how others are feeling about this. I know Claude Code and other solutions are popular. But how do they stack up in terms of usability and utility compared to codex?

egorfine• 11 months ago

I misread the source as "alexjones dot app" first and I was impressed.

stuaxo• 11 months ago

Tech is full of bandwagons and its certainly one way to get paid well.

Hopefully they make a chunk.

realaaa• 11 months ago

let's build AI together they said, it'll be fun they said :)

We're Joining OpenAI

Related Stories