OpenAI’s head of product reveals the massive adoption gap holding back AI agents

OpenAI has an internal adoption problem that most companies would kill for, and an external one that keeps its leadership up at night. Nearly every employee at the company uses its Codex tool. Outside the building, almost nobody does. Thibault Sottiaux, who leads core product work at OpenAI and reports to co-founder Greg Brockman, laid out those numbers in a recent interview with TechCrunch. About 98% of OpenAI’s own employees actively use Codex. Among organizational subscribers, just 17% engage with AI agents. For individual subscribers, the figure drops below 1%. The gap between builders and users Sottiaux’s explanation centers on user experience. The current generation of AI agents requires too much configuration, too many permission settings, and too little guidance on what they can actually do. OpenAI’s proposed solution is ChatGPT Work, which launched in July 2026 at $20 per month. The product targets non-engineers specifically, designed to handle autonomous, multi-step tasks across tools like email, Slack, and calendars. Brockman’s consolidation play Sottiaux’s reporting line matters here. Greg Brockman, who co-founded OpenAI, has taken on broader oversight of product strate...