OpenAI Launches $230 Codex Micro Keyboard
Get the Tech newsletter
Daily tech — startups, AI labs, chips, the launches that shape the next decade. Free.
- OpenAI launched the $230 Codex Micro keyboard, co-designed with Work Louder, featuring light-up "Agent Keys," customizable Command Keys, a joystick, and a dial that adjusts agent "reasoning" levels — effectively a "command center" for Codex coding agents.
- OpenAI told TechCrunch the Micro is a limited-run collaboration — a novelty item meant to herald its hardware market entry rather than serve as a mass-market product, controllable via the ChatGPT desktop app.
- A Tuesday Bloomberg report described a separate, unreleased OpenAI device — a portable, screenless smart speaker with "mechanical elements that can move on their own" that integrates with ChatGPT; the item is still in development and subject to change.
- Apple last week sued OpenAI for trade theft, accusing its senior leadership of a "deliberate strategy" to extract confidential Apple information — a suit that lands as Bloomberg revealed an unreleased OpenAI smart speaker is being designed by former Apple engineers; OpenAI has denied wrongdoing.
- Apple's complaint alleges OpenAI used the extracted information specifically in developing its own hardware devices, directly targeting the push that now spans both the $230 keyboard and the Bloomberg-reported smart speaker.
Why it matters: The keyboard debut and Bloomberg's smart speaker scoop crystallize OpenAI's pivot from software to hardware — and Apple's lawsuit, alleging a 'deliberate strategy' by senior OpenAI leadership to steal trade secrets, now targets that exact hardware push. The fact that ex-Apple engineers are building the unreleased device visibly ties the complaint to OpenAI's roadmap.
