OpenAI Previews Codex for Hardware Engineering

OpenAI says ChatGPT and Codex, its chat assistant and its coding agent, are now being used for hardware work: mechanical design, electrical engineering and simulation. The announcement is a progress report, not a product launch. It describes use by OpenAI's own hardware teams and tests of new workflows with outside industry collaborators, and the post names no product, availability date or measured result. OpenAI's longer write-up on its website could not be read for this explanation, so the collaborator work it may describe is not covered here.

The concrete example is in the attached video, read here from an automatic transcript. Justin Lin, who works on OpenAI's research team, built a small device for talking to Codex: a Codex "pet" on a display with a push-to-talk button, so he can speak to the agent without opening his laptop. He describes the project as a showcase for GPT-6 Astra, the model OpenAI launched in September with claimed strengths in computer use, coding, cybersecurity and science, combining computer use with what he calls new physical engineering capabilities. Lin says he told ChatGPT what he wanted and gave it plans, and that Astra designed the circuit board. It was his first time taking a board from bare to assembled. He says they made many parallel design candidates and enclosure versions, and that it took some rounds with the factory before the finished board came back; the transcript's wording there is garbled, reading "a few routes with factory". In the demo he asks the device whether he has any active Codex agents, and it answers five.

The example is a small personal build by an OpenAI employee, posted by OpenAI to show off its model. By Lin's account, Astra designed the board for a simple gadget under his direction, with some back and forth with the manufacturer. It does not show how the approach holds up on the larger systems that industry engineers work on, and the post and video offer no error rates, time savings or outside assessment. The supported update is narrower: OpenAI is now pitching Codex and Astra at electrical and mechanical design as well as software, with its own staff as the showcase.