OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks at the BlackRock Infrastructure Summit in Washington on March 11, 2026.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images
OpenAI announced Thursday that it will acquire Astral, a small startup that makes popular open source tools for software developers.
Astral’s team will join OpenAI to help build an artificial intelligence coding assistant called Codex. The companies did not disclose financial terms of the acquisition.
“Through it all, though, our goal is the same: to make programming more productive. To build tools that fundamentally change the way it feels to build software,” Astral founder and CEO Charlie Marsh wrote in a blog post.
AI coding assistants have exploded in popularity over the past year, with OpenAI vying to steal users and market share from rivals like Anthropic and Cursor, which have unique and compelling offerings for developers.
OpenAI announced Thursday that Codex has more than 2 million weekly active users, and the number of users of the tool has tripled since the beginning of the year.
The company’s acquisition of Astral remains subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.
OpenAI has made a number of acquisitions recently, including a $6.4 billion deal with Jony Ive’s AI device startup io in May 2025. Earlier this month, the company announced it was acquiring cybersecurity startup Promptfoo, and in January acquired healthcare technology startup Torch.
In December, OpenAI hired Google’s Albert Lee as head of corporate development, a move that suggests the company will continue to look for M&A targets that can help it gain an edge.
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