OpenAI has been working on a few hardware products lately, and at the helm is Apple's ex-chief engineer Jony Ive. Now a rumoured product is a device or a phone that would change the way we look at and use smartphones. But hold your horses, as the hardware from OpenAI that makes its debut might not be a smartphone just yet or even a wearable, but it could be a micro pad which will be employed for the company's coding tool Codex.
OpenAI laid out the new device at the AI Engineer World Fair that took place in San Francisco, being dubbed the Codex Micro, which works as an input device and is made in collaboration with a company called Work Louder. The accessories company is known for making macro pads and mechanical keyboards which come with mappable keys, switches and dials.
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What Is Codex Micro?
Despite the name, Codex Micro is not one of the AI hardware products that OpenAI is developing with Jony Ive. According to a report by The Verge, OpenAI spokesperson Dominik Kundel introduced the device at the AI Engineer World Fair, describing it as a keyboard built to "supercharge people's Codex usage."
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The Codex Micro appears to be based on Work Louder's Creator Micro 2, a compact programmable keypad that features 13 mechanical keys, a joystick and a touch-sensitive control area. The accessory is designed to let users assign custom shortcuts and automate frequently used actions across different applications.
OpenAI has not yet detailed how the Codex Micro differs from the standard Creator Micro 2. However, it is expected to include dedicated controls for the Codex AI coding assistant, making it easier to access commonly used functions through physical buttons instead of constantly switching windows or relying on copy-and-paste commands.
The company has also not shared the complete list of features or confirmed when more details will be announced.
OpenAI is not the first to collaborate with Work Louder on a customised keypad. Earlier, Figma launched its own version of the Creator Micro, featuring preconfigured shortcuts tailored to its design platform.
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When Will It Launch?
The AI giant has just shared a few teasers of the said device on X, and the launch for the same is slated for July 15, 2026. For now it is not known if the codex will mark its debut in the international market at once or will have a phased rollout that is too limited to a few markets. The pricing also remains ambiguous as of now for the Codex Micro, but for anticipatory reference, Work Louder's Creatore Micro 2 went for $199 in the US, which translates to Rs 18,800, so this might give you a small idea of how the pricing might be done with this device. For now OpenAI is keeping things under wraps for other hardware projects it might be onto.