OpenAI enters hardware market with $230 Codex keyboard

OpenAI has officially entered the hardware market with the launch of the Codex Micro, a $230 light-up keyboard designed to pair with its AI coding assistant, Codex. The launch arrives alongside a separate, more ambitious hardware project that is already tangled up in a trade theft lawsuit from Apple.

Co-designed with specialty keyboard designer Work Louder, the limited-run keyboard functions as a physical “command center for agentic work” — OpenAI’s term for tasks handled by semi-autonomous AI coding agents, bots that can write and execute code with little human input. Through the keyboard, users can also adjust an agent’s reasoning level, meaning the amount of time and computing power the agent spends on a given task. OpenAI told TechCrunch the Micro is a limited-run collaboration, adding that it is more of a novelty item than a product designed for mass appeal.

A more consequential hardware project is reportedly underway. Bloomberg reported Tuesday on a yet-to-be-released OpenAI device that sounds like it is being designed for the long haul: a portable, screenless smart speaker that integrates with ChatGPT and is described as involving “mechanical elements that can move on their own.” Bloomberg reported the device is still in development and subject to change, and that it is reportedly being designed by former engineers from Apple.

That connection has not gone unnoticed. Apple last week sued OpenAI, accusing the company’s senior leadership of a deliberate strategy to extract its confidential information; it alleges OpenAI used that information in developing its own hardware device. OpenAI has denied wrongdoing.

Why it matters

OpenAI’s hardware ambitions are expanding from a novelty accessory to a more complex consumer device, but that physical expansion now faces legal headwinds from Apple, the very company whose former engineers are reportedly helping design it.