OpenAI DevDay 2026

My takeaway from OpenAI DevDay 2026: the opportunity is moving into products and business workflows. Here’s what I’m acting on.

The product layer is where the work is shifting

News: OpenAI launched agents that run over the top of codex and chat sessions, which runs over the top of their models and APIs, thereby disintermediating their own product.

“Everyone is now moving to the product layer.” That was my reaction during the event because as time goes on, the foundational model companies are moving further and further up the stack to disintermediate everything. One chat interface over the top of your entire work and personal life.

Key finding: I see a major opportunity in personal agents working across enterprise software. As I posted: “A lot of money to be had with personal AI agents for the enterprise.” This is more than what most enterprise software companies are doing. Instead of only agentifying workflows, you’re really putting an agent over the top of all the tools and workflows and third party systems that the person interacts with all day.

Again, one chat interface to rule them all.

Impact: Find the expensive workflow, the person who owns it, and the result they will pay for. Start there.

Recursive self-improvement is a 2027 disruptive risk for your business

News: “Recursive-Self Invention: built the v1 during dev day today” I turned the structural elements of my invention process into productized software in one day as it could build on all my prior work over the last 6 months.

Key finding: My view is that recursive self-improvement will reach businesses rapidly in 2027. Treating it as a speculative, medium- or long-term disruption risks preparing too late.

Businesses will put everyone in the company on Codex, it will manage enterprise-grade encryption, connectivity to third-party enterprise software platforms, create real-time shared memory across all employee’s work and agents (agents will talk to each other), and then adapt in real time to drive higher ROI across the business.

Over time, there is a natural force to move more and more of the operational footprint into codex and openAI tools so it has the context, shared memory for multiplayer mode and collective organizational intelligence. Agents will, in real-time, identify the needs of the business, coordinate amongst agents, humans, and third parties, execute, and deliver faster, better, cheaper at scale.

Businesses who don’t onboard into the faster cycle times of the new business paradigm fall behind and eventually go bankrupt because they can’t compete at the speed or quality level.

OpenAI eats everything from the bottom and inside out. But you’ll be okay with it because it’s the one unified layer. Taking years to develop it yourself puts you and your company behind and at risk.

Impact: Begin to move everyone onto a single set of shared tools (e.g., codex) and stop allowing people to use many different company’s AI platforms. You will need the history, context, and data to be ready when RSI is launched so you can launch out of the gate rapidly, and your customers can feel the benefits nearly immediately.

Build something a customer can use

News: “Agents disintermediated apps. Now we must disintermediate agents.” That was my next thought after the keynote.

Key finding: The opportunity extends to the work around agents: discovering needs, building tools, evaluating them, and learning, in real time. Those who move faster, maintain competitive advantage. Those who move slower, end up losing faster.

Impact: We’re starting with an Invention product at Evergences. Find a business with a concrete need, build a small PoC, and test whether it creates enough value to use and pay for. Jetpack Intel and Echo provide foundations for presentation and opportunity tracking. Invention’s continuous generation and release workflow is still being tested.

Keep the builder experience human

News: “I've gotta hand it to Sam. He presents really well.” My favorite prompt was “rewrite the back-end in rust”. There was merch and a ModRetro Chromatic handheld, too. I’ve got a retro 8-bit game I built that I may share next week for a story concept I’ve been working on tied to our ecosystem. Stay tuned.

Here’s to the crazy psychotic ones

“2027 should be wild”. As a friend I met with said and I continue to repeat years later, “The world is weird, and it’s getting weirder.”