# OpenAI bet on Codex despite trailing CloudCode

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/openai-bet-on-codex-despite-trailing-cloudcode/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Sam Altman](https://realalpha.app/builders/sam-altman/) · Sam Altman is co-Founder & CEO of OpenAI.
- Host: [Ti Morse](https://realalpha.app/people/ti-morse/) · Host, Relentless · Interviews hard-tech founders on Relentless; guests include Sam Altman, Brian Armstrong and Hadrian's Chris Power.
- Show: Relentless
- Episode: [Sam Altman - How to Start a Startup](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/), Jul 25, 2026
- Moment: 50:53 to 53:38 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/openai-bet-on-codex-despite-trailing-cloudcode/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/?t=3053

## Quote

> “We were **way behind CloudCode**, and it seemed like a kind of crazy kamikaze mission to try to beat them with a coding app.”
> — [Sam Altman](https://realalpha.app/builders/sam-altman/) at [52:13](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/?t=3133) · Relentless

## Takeaways

1. Codex began as a bet against a rival with momentum.
2. Altman saw coding as essential to reaching superintelligence.
3. The team turned the bet into a tool top coders use.

## About this segment

OpenAI asked a team to build Codex despite trailing a rival, because coding was strategically important. Sam Altman says the bet became a product used by top coders he knows.

From “Sam Altman - How to Start a Startup”, Jul 25, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[51:00](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/?t=3060) each of those is like a very different approach one thing that i know that brian chesky does uh is he talks about like shamelessly trying to find whoever the expert is and any given thing and then basically just go ask them whatever question he has if he's trying to come up to speed on something what is your process for doing something like that if it's something new that you need to become good at in a very rapid period of time definitely finding the experts and talking to them reading as much as i can uh i don't have a lot of like great chat i don't have a lot of like novel strategies here i i've always been really grateful and pleasantly surprised by how much experts are willing to help people if they ask uh it's like a very nice thing about humanity one thing i've heard you say is you should always ask for what you want

[51:49](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/?t=3109) because not all the time you get it but sometimes you do sometimes you do and when you do amazing things can happen when was the last time that you asked for something that would seem absolutely insane to someone else And you got it. Actually, it was this recent time I got in a plane that I still can't talk about, but it didn't work. Go back one more that you can talk about. I mean, in some sense, Codex was an example of this. Like, this is not the most recent one, but it was one that I think it's instructive.

[52:20](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/?t=3140) We were way behind CloudCode, and it seemed like a kind of crazy kamikaze mission to try to beat them with a coding app. and you know the like the consensus is that this kind of thing never works and you just move on to the next one but you know it's like a fool's errand to try to like win when someone else already has momentum in a particular product category but we decided we thought it was really important we asked a team to do it they performed a legitimate like unbelievable very rare in the history of business thing and now it is the product that most of and model that most of the best coders that i know use um and that felt like an impossible thing but if we hadn't asked the team like hey we have a really important but extremely hard mission for you which wouldn't have happened why'd you make that decision why didn't you just give up because it felt like one

[53:12](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/?t=3192) of these few very strategic areas that was going to happen very quickly and coding is so important to rsi to say nothing of the economic value that we just didn't it didn't feel like one we could give up on at yc you basically had the most distilled version of what the mission was