OpenAI’s first piece of hardware is not the mysterious gadget everyone is waiting for. It is a small keyboard for people who talk to an AI all day.
On Monday, the OpenAI Developers account posted a short video on X. It showed a small square device with a grid of buttons, glowing through a cycle of colours. The caption read: “Your favourite Codex shortcuts are getting an upgrade.” A date followed: July 15.
The teaser, first reported by The Verge, is for a physical controller tied to Codex, OpenAI’s AI coding tool. An OpenAI spokesperson told Business Insider the device will carry the name Codex Micro. It is “designed to supercharge people’s Codex usage,” they said. Neither the price nor the full feature list is public yet.
This is not the mysterious consumer AI device OpenAI is building with former Apple designer Jony Ive. That project is still months away. OpenAI’s finance chief has said it should arrive by the end of the year. Codex Micro is something smaller and stranger. It is a niche accessory for the growing tribe of people who code by chatting with an AI.
OpenAI built the device with Work Louder, a hardware maker known for mechanical keyboards and macro pads. A macro pad is a small board of programmable keys, dials, and switches that sits beside your keyboard. You map each button to a shortcut or a chain of actions. One press then does what would otherwise take several clicks.
